Eusebius' Life of Constantine is the most important single record of Constantine, the emperor who turned the Roman Empire from prosecuting the Church to supporting it, with huge and lasting consequences for Europe and Christianity. The only English version previously available is based on a seventeenth-century Greek edition, but two new critical editions produced this century make a new English version necessary. The authors of this edition present the results of the recent scholarly debate, as well as their own (...) researches so as to clarify the significance of Eusebius' work and introduce the student to the text and its interpretation, thus opening up the contentious issues. At face value much of what Eusebius wrote is false. This book shows how, once his partisan interpretations and rhetoric are properly understood, both Eusebius' text and the documents it contains give vital historical insights. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Samantha Vice is correct to claim that whites should feel shame and regret, though perhaps not guilt, at their whiteness. She is wrong, however, to suggest that there is a sense in which whites should live in silence and humility, and withdraw from public political space. In particular, I argue that this latter claim has absurd consequences, since it implies a withdrawal from non-public and non-political spaces also. Besides, whites, as complex selves, face conflicting (...) reasons for action which Vice insufficiently grapples with. I conclude, however, that Vice is best interpreted as rightly suggesting that whites should live in careful reflective self-awareness of how their whiteness, and whiteliness, unfairly privileges them, still. This is preferable advice to Vice’s notions of silence and humility which are rightly but unnecessarily susceptible to confusion and compelling counterargument. Or so I argue. (shrink)

Eusebius of Cesarea, in his Praeparatio Evangelica, quotes a large piece of Plotinus’ writing to which Porphyry, in his edition of the Enneads, gave the title “On the Immortality of Soul”. Surprisingly, the piece quoted by Eusebius is absent from the Porphyrian edition. Some reasons for this absence have been adduced: some scholars think that the text quoted by Eusebius might be a trace of the edition of Plotinus’s writings made by Eustochius; others think that it (...) might come from the copies Amelius carried to Apameia. This paper will try to show that the opinion that the text quoted by Eusebius come from an edition other than that of Porphyry is hardly defendable, and that the absence of such piece from Porphyry’s edition can be explained by an accident on the direct tradition of the Enneads. (shrink)

Eusebius of Caesarea drew heavily on pagan philosophy in developing the first Christian political theology. His quotations from Plato’s most political work, the Laws, are so extensive that they are treated as a manuscript authority by modern editors. Yet Eusebius’s actual use of the Laws is oddly detached from Plato’s own political intentions in that work, adapting it to a model of philosophical kingship closer to the Republic and applied to the emperor Constantine. For Eusebius the Laws (...) mainly shows the agreement of Christian and pagan morality, while his political theory centers on the establishment and maintenance of a Christian empire under a Christian emperor who is a philosopher-king. His view represents one of the fundamental political options in ancient Christianity, one that influenced later Byzantine political theology, but was largely rejected in the west. (shrink)

Of the many accounts of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge ina.d.312 written soon after the conflict, only those of Eusebius of Caesarea have Maxentius cross the Tiber on a bridge of boats to face the forces of Constantine. This detail, it is here argued, suggests that Maxentius may be seen as a latter-day Xerxes, the Persian emperor who, in preparation for his invasion of Greece in 480b.c., famously spanned the Hellespont with a pair of boat-bridges. The article first (...) reviews the seminal accounts of Xerxes’ feat in Aeschylus’Persiansand Herodotus’Histories, and next discusses the story's long afterlife in subsequent Greek (and Latin) authors, including those of Late Antiquity. Close analysis of Eusebius’ battle narratives in hisEcclesiastical History(9.9.3–8) and in hisLife of Constantine(1.38) reveals that their vocabulary echoes the distinctive language used by Aeschylus, Herodotus and later writers in reference to Xerxes’ achievement. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this identification of Maxentius with Xerxes. It exemplifies two venerable tactics in Roman political propaganda: that of portraying a native rival as a foreign enemy and that of mapping the Persian Wars onto contemporary events. As Xerxesrediuiuus, Maxentius is cast as the quintessential barbarian tyrant, an Eastern despot resident in Rome. (shrink)

The present article concerns the problem of the different endings of the Gospel of Mark according to Eusebius of Caesarea, Quaestiones ad Marinum, 1, 1-3 and Severus of Antioch, Homily 77, 16, 1, which is largely based on Eusebius’ Quaestiones ad Marinum. The author proposes a new interpretation of Eusebius’ passage by comparing it with what Severus of Antioch says in his Homily. The final chapter deals with a possible allusion to a lost Quaestio ad Marinum in (...) Severus’ Homily. (shrink)

The Demonic in the Political Thought of Eusebius of Caesarea explores how Eusebius of Caesarea's ideas about demons interacted with and helped to shape his thought on other topics, particularly political topics Hazel Johannessen builds on and complements recent work on early Christian and early modern demonology. Eusebius' political thought has long drawn the attention of scholars who have identified in some of his works the foundations of later Byzantine theories of kingship. However, Eusebius' political thought (...) has not previously been examined in the light of his views on demons. Moreover, despite frequent references to demons throughout many of Eusebius' works, there has been no comprehensive study of Eusebius' views on demons, until now, as expressed throughout a range of his works.The originality of this study lies both in an initial examination of Eusebius' views on demons and their place in his cosmology, and in the application of the insights derived from this to consideration of his political thought. As a result of this new perspective, Johannessen challenges scholars' traditional characterization of Eusebius as a triumphal optimist. Instead, she draws attention to his concerns about a continuing demonic threat, capable of disrupting humankind's salvation, and presents Eusebius as a more cautious figure than the one familiar to late antique scholarship. (shrink)

In 1967 Alan Cameron published a landmark article in this journal, ‘The fate of Pliny'sLettersin the late Empire’. Opposing the traditional thesis that the letters of Pliny the Younger were only rediscovered in the mid to late fifth century by Sidonius Apollinaris, Cameron proposed that closer attention be paid to the faint but clear traces of the letters in the third and fourth centuries. On the basis of well-observed intertextual correspondences, Cameron proposed that Pliny's letters were being read by the (...) end of the fourth century at the latest. That article now seems the vanguard of a rise in scholarly interest in Pliny's late-antique reception. But Cameron also noted the explicit attention given to the letters by two earlier commentators—Tertullian of Carthage, in the late second to early third century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early fourth. The use of Pliny in these two earliest commentators, in stark contrast to their later successors, has received almost no subsequent attention. (shrink)

Eusebius' Life of Constantine is the most important single record of Constantine, the emperor who turned the Roman Empire from prosecuting the Church to supporting it, with huge and lasting consequences for Europe and Christianity. The only English version previously available is based on a seventeenth-century Greek edition, but two new critical editions produced this century make a new English version necessary. The authors of this edition present the results of the recent scholarly debate, as well as their own (...) researches so as to clarify the significance of Eusebius' work and introduce the student to the text and its interpretation, thus opening up the contentious issues. At face value much of what Eusebius wrote is false. This book shows how, once his partisan interpretations and rhetoric are properly understood, both Eusebius' text and the documents it contains give vital historical insights. (shrink)

I argue for the authenticity of a fragment found in Eusebius, PE i 2.2-5, and sometimes attributed to Porphyry of Tyre. I argue against the case for non-Porphyrian authorship that has become dominant in recent years, employing evidence that highlights congruity with generally accepted Porphyrian works. This allows me to move on to an initial reconstruction of Porphyry’s religious epistemology, and to assess what that means in his historical context.

Mr. Norman H. Baynes thinks that the conclusions which I reached in my essay on the ‘Chronology of the Ninth Book of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius’ are ‘difficult to believe.’ That is due, he says, to the fact that I based my reconstruction ‘on one of the most doubtful sections of that book’—that in which Eusebius states that the Emperor Maximin wrote his letter to Sabinus after he received the ‘Edict of Milan.’ From it I inferred that (...) the letter was dispatched early in 313. No doubt Eusebius' assertion raises difficulties. But when a contemporary witness of high authority speaks it may be wise not to reject his evidence before the difficulties which seem to overthrow it are scrutinized. In the present instance the difficulties seem to me to vanish on examination. But Mr. Baynes appears to have overlooked my attempt to deal with them. His own view of the date of the letter is expressed in a single sentence ‘In November of 312 Maximin would receive news of Constantine's victory [at the Milvian Bridge], and as a result he issues the letter to Sabinus permitting Christian worship late in 312.’ But where is his evidence? All I can find is that in his edict of toleration Maximin affirms that ‘last year’ he wrote the letter. ‘This passage proves that that letter dates from the year 312.’ Yes, if Maximin's year began in January. But is that certain? In the East, New Year's Day was not uncommonly in September. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze a fragment by Porphyry concerning Seleucid history and transmitted by Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon. A short introduction on this work will be followed by a defense of the authorship of the fragment as Porphyrian, and by a cautious suggestion to assign it to the Contra Christianos. In the last section, the fragment will be examined at length and its ideological background will be highlighted. In particular, the account of Seleucid kings' deaths (...) shows that Porphyry turned to sources favorable to that dynasty. A critical voice seems to raise only when the author recounts of Demetrius I and of his descendants. (shrink)

What is the value of history to philosophy? Hasok Chang proposes that when a philosophical model runs into a problem, it is likely that its underlying historical assumption that informs and upholds such model, requires a revisit, if not, a major overhaul. A reconstruction of history could contribute to a new way of approaching philosophical problems. Chang through a series of articles gives us a detailed account of the debate over the nature of combustion, phlogiston and fixed air in the (...) late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which shed light on operationalism, realism, natural kinds, pragmatism, epistemic iteration, incommensurability, epistemic pluralism, and other philosophcical issues in the realm of HPS. This article applied his interdisciplinary approach to philosophy and history, to the three prevalent models concerning the relation between Christianity and philosophy. I argue that Integration Model, Disjunction Model, and Conflict Model, is not clear-cut but interwoven in the thoughts of early church fathers, many of whom hold onto paradoxical stances. I suggest that it is better to measure a person’s commitment to Christianity and philosophy on a spectrum with philosophy on one side while Christianity the other. A person’s degrees of committment move back and forth on the spectrum contingent upon the semantic, political and social contexts within which they are speaking, as will be shown in the case of two early church fathers, Lactantius and Eusebius. (shrink)

Eusebius' magisterial Praeparatio Evangelica offers a defence of Christianity in the face of Greek accusations of irrationality and impiety. Aaron P. Johnson seeks to appreciate Eusebius' contribution to the discourses of Christian identity by investigating the constructions of ethnic identity at the heart of his work.

그리스 철학사에서 피론은 그리스 최초의 회의주의자임과 동시에, 아이네시데모스가 창설한 피론학파의 시조였다. 그는 삶의 문제에 있어서 ‘초연함(adiaphoria)’과 ‘태연함(apatheia)’ 그리고 ‘마음의 평정(ataraxia)’을 강조하였으며, 외부 대상에 대한 ‘이해불가능성(acatalepsia)’과 ‘판단유보(epoche)’의 원리를 정립하였다.BR 서구철학사에 나타나는 피론의 모습은 다양하고, 기이하며, 이중적이고, 모순적이기까지 하다. 필자는 디오게네스 라에르티오스의 『유명한 철학자들의 생애와 사상』, 아리스토클레스의 『철학에 대하여』그리고 에우세비오스의 『복음의 준비』등에 대한 연구를 통해, 일차적으로는 그의 회의주의가 피론주의가 아니라는 테오도시오스의 시각을 불식시킴과 아울러, 궁극적으로는 그의 회의주의가 후대의 피론주의와 연속하는 철학임을 밝혔다.BR 에우세비오스의 『복음의 준비』에 나타난 아리스토클레스의 토막글들은, 피론 철학에 대한 다양한 모습과 (...) 복잡한 해석가능성들을 잘 보여준다. 특히, 아리스토클레스의 단편 C는 복잡한 논쟁을 불러일으키는 문제적 토막글이다. 이것에 대한 해석에는 주관적(인식론적) 해석과 객관적(형이상학적) 해석이 존재하는데, 전자의 입장을 대표하는 연구자로는 E. 젤러가 있고, 후자의 입장을 대표하는 학자로는 연구자로는 S. H. 스바르브손과 R. 베트 등이 있다. 그런데, 주관적 해석을 강조하게 되면 피론의 회의주의와 피론주의와의 연속성을 확보할 수 있는 장점이 있으나, 텍스트를 일부 수정해야 한다는 단점이 있다. 객관적 해석을 강조하게 되면, 텍스트를 해석하는데 있어서는 논리성을 확보할 수 있으나, 피론의 회의주의와 피론주의와의 연속성을 확보할 수 없다는 문제점이 노출된다. 이에, 필자는 객관적 해석 또는 형이상학적 해석과 일정한 거리를 두면서, 피론을 회의주의자로, 그리고 피론의 회의주의를 피론주의와 연속하는 철학임을 밝혔다. (shrink)

This paper aims at re-evaluating the significance of Peripatetic features in Severus’ exegesis of the Timaeus through a comparison between Severus’ doxography in the PM and the fragment of his treatise on the soul quoted by Eusebius. Indeed, until now, the scholarly literature has been inclined to consider Severus as a plain anti-Aristotelian and pro-Stoic Platonist. However the recent edition of the Porphyrian lost treatise On Principles and Matter allows us to grasp more clearly to what extant Severus’ view (...) on the nature of the soul and on the bodily motion is grounded on an in-depth knowledge of the Peripatetic debates of his time. (shrink)