Constantine (of all people) provides a neat little analysis of the violent ontology of polytheism is his Good Friday oration, which Eusebius appended to the Life of Constantine : if the dominion of these [created] things, numberless as they are, were in the hands, not of one but of many, there must be a partition and distribution of the elements, and the old fables would be true; jealousy, too, and ambition, striving for superior power, would destroy the harmonious concord of the whole, while each of the many masters would regulate in a manner different from the rest the portion subject to his control.”
He even suggests that polytheism is incompatible with mercy: If there are many gods, “should I not, while expressing my gratitude to the Power who favored my request, convey a reproach to him who opposed it? Or to whom should I pray, when desiring the know the cause of my calamity, and to obtain deliverance? . . . Where then is mercy?”
Not bad for a soldier often described as untaught.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…
