Chapter 18

After this I must bring my speech to a close, most Sacred Majesty; though it is my words rather than my gratitude which will end. For the latter is unending: its course can never be run, for it knows no stopping point. Yet I must make a slight digression and turn not very far from you to God. Eternal Begetter of all things, thyself unbegotten, Creator and Cause of the universe, more ancient than its beginning, outlasting its end, Thou who hast built thine own temples and altars in the inmost hearts of the initiated 1 worshippers: Thou hast implanted in Gratian, the lord of this world below, such seeds of love towards me that separation has not weakened his remembrance of me though parted from him. He has honoured me though I was no longer in his presence, he has preferred me above those who stand before him; and further: because distance would not allow him to be present at the opening ceremony of my elevation, he has hastened to attend the solemnities of my laying down office, that his bounties might be completed by his courtesy. For what record is there, even in the daring fables of the Greeks, of a journey so swiftly accomplished? Winged Pegasus starting from Lycia travelled no further than Cilicia: Cyllarus and Arion 2 grew old between Argos and Nemea. Even the steeds of a Castor do not accomplish that endless journey of theirs without changing their riders.3 You, Gratian, speed across all those frontiers of the Roman Empire, all those rivers and lakes, all those barriers of old-established kingdoms, from distant Thrace and along the whole coast, through all its length, of Illyricum, through Venetia, Liguria, and old Gaul, over the forbidding peaks of Rhaetia, across the fords of the Rhine, through the thick country of the Sequani and across the plains of Germany; you speed across them, I repeat, swifter in your passage than my rapid speech, without stopping for rest, without indulging fully in sleep or in food; and all to shed the unexpected light of your presence upon your favourite Gaul, to surprise (how welcome the surprise!) your own consul while still in office, to make even Rumour, who is usually swifter than the winds, a slower traveller than yourself. This was your tribute to my age, this to my dignity! God, that supreme confidant, controller and author both of your throne and of your counsels, has graciously permitted that the curule chair (which you will often fill with so much grace), that my magisterial robe dyed with your glowing purple, that my consular apparel which is enriched less by its own gold than by your munificence—that all these favours, which your noble letter from Illyricum made vet more honourable, should gain yet further in lustre by your presence in Gaul; that your quaestor, your praetorian prefect, your consul, and—a name which you still rate above all my titles—your tutor, lie whom you designated with your sacred lips, whom you named as senior consul on substantial grounds, whom you enriched with your generous bounty, should be hallowed by the condescension of your royal attentions.