{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/201/2010522.htm","path":"chr/ecf/201/2010522.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/201/2010522.htm","text":"Chapter III.\u2014Of his Picture surmounted by a Cross and having beneath it a Dragon.\nAnd besides this, he caused to be painted on a lofty tablet, and set up in the front of the portico of his palace, so as to be visible to all, a representation of the salutary sign placed above his head, and below it that hateful and savage adversary of mankind, who by means of the tyranny of the ungodly had wasted the Church of God, falling headlong, under the form of a dragon, to the abyss of destruction. For the sacred oracles in the books of God\u2019s prophets have described him as a dragon and a crooked serpent; 3230 and for this reason the emperor thus publicly displayed a painted 3231 resemblance of the dragon beneath his own and his children\u2019s feet, stricken through with a dart, and cast headlong into the depths of the sea.\nIn this manner he intended to represent the secret adversary of the human race, and to indicate that he was consigned to the gulf of perdition by virtue of the salutary trophy placed above his head. This allegory, then, was thus conveyed by means of the colors of a picture: and I am filled with wonder at the intellectual greatness of the emperor, who as if by divine inspiration thus expressed what the prophets had foretold concerning this monster, saying that \u201cGod would bring his great and strong and terrible sword against the dragon, the flying serpent; and would destroy the dragon that was in the sea.\u201d 3232 This it was of which the emperor gave a true and faithful representation in the picture above described.\nEspecially the book of Revelation, and Isaiah as quoted below.\n520:3231\n[Literally, by encaustic painting. See Bk. 1, ch. 3, note.\u2014Bag.]\n520:3232\nIsa. xxvii. 1. This is not taken from the Septuagint translation, as it corresponds with the Hebrew against the LXX. It differs in the word used for \u201cterrible,\u201d and none of the editions (or at least not the Vatican, Holmes and Parsons, Van Ess, or Tischendorf) and none of the mss. cited by Holmes and Parsons, have the phrase \u201cin the sea\u201d as the Hebrew. Grabe has this latter as various reading (ed. Bagster, 16\u00ba, p. 74), but there is hardly a possibility that it is the true reading.","title":"Nicene and Ante-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol I: The Life of Constantine with Orations of Constantine and Eusebius.: Chapter III","type":"page"}