At Eastertide, at some undetermined place and year, the Emperor Constantine I made his Oration to the Assembly of the Saints, either in Latin (Oratio ad sanctorum coetum) or Greek (Λόγος τῷ τῶν ἁγίων συλλόγῳ). It is a lengthy and not terribly interesting text, but given the fact that the emperor himself was reading it, if you were sitting at the front it would have been politic to feign interest or at least try to stay awake. In chapter XX (out of XXVI), he makes a reference to Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue: “Another Tiphys shall new seas explore; Another Argo land the chiefs upon the Iberian shore; Another Helen other wars create, And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate”. He goes on to explain the comparison ...
