13
There are places where history is inescapable, like a highway accident—places where geography provokes history.
Such is Istanbul, alias Constantinople, alias Byzantium. A traffic light gone haywire, with all three colors flaring up at once. Not red-amber-grecn but white-amber-brown. Also, of course, blue: for the water, for thc Bosponts-Marmara- Dardanelles, which separates Europe from Asia—or does it? Ah, all these natural frontiers, these straits and Urals of ours! How little they have ever meant to armies or cultures, and even less to non-cultures—though for nomads they may actually have signified a bit more than for princes inspired by the linear principle and justified in advance by an entrancing vision of the future.
Did not Christianity triumph precisely because it provided an end that justified the means, because it temporarily —i.e., for the whole of one's life—absolved one from responsibility? Because the next step, any step at all, in any direction, was becoming logical? Wasn't it—in the spiritual sense, at least, Christianity—an anthropological echo of nomadic existence, its metastasis in the psychology of man the settler? Or, better still, hasn't it simply coincided with purely imperial needs? Pay alone could hardly be enough to stir a legionary (whose career's meaning lay precisely in a long-service bonus, demobilization, and getting a farm plot) from the spot. He should be inspired, too; otherwise, the legions turn into that wolf which only Tiberius could haul back by the ears.
14
A consequence can rarely look back at its cause with anything like approval. Still less can it suspect the cause of anything. The relations between effect and cause lack, as a rule, the rational, analytic element. As a rule, they are tautological and, at best, tinged with the incoherent enthusiasm the latter feels for the former.
It should not be forgotten, therefore, that the belief system called Christianity came from the East, and, for the same reason, it shouldn't be forgotten that one of the ideas that overpowered Constantine after the victory over Maxentius and the vision of the cross was the desire to come at least physically closer to the source of that victory and that vision: to the East. I have no clear notion of what was going on in Judea at that time, but it is obvious, at least, that if Constantine had set off by land to go there he would have encountered a good many obstacles. In any event, to found a capital overseas would have contradicted plain common sense. Also, one shouldn't rule out a dislike of Jews, quite possible on Constantine's part.
There is something amusing, and even a bit alarming, isn't there, in the idea that the East is actually the metaphysical center of mankind? Christianity had been only one of a considerable number of sects within the Empire— though, admittedly, the most active. By Constantine's reign, the Roman Empire, in no small measure because of its sheer size, had been a veritable country fair or bazaar of creeds. With the exception of the Copts and the cult of Isis, however, the source of all the belief systems on offer was in fact the East.
The West was offering nothing. Essentially, the West was a customer. Let us treat the West with tenderness, then, precisely for its lack of this sort of inventiveness, for which it has paid quite heavily, that pay including the reproaches of excessive rationality one hears to this day. Is this not the way a vender inflates the price of his wares? And where will he go once his coffers are overflowing?
15
If the Roman elegists reflected the outlook of their public in any way at all, one might suppose that by Constantine's reign—i.e., four centuries after the elegists—arguments like "The motherland is in danger" or "Pax Romana" had lost their spell and cogency. And if Eusebius' assertions are correct then Constantine turns out to be neither more nor less than the first Crusader. One should not lose sight of the fact that the Rome of Constantine was no longer the Rome of Augustus, or even that of the Antonines. It was, generally speaking, not ancient Rome anymore: it was Christian Rome, What Constantine brought to Byzantium no longer denoted classical culture: it was already the culture of a new age, brewed in the concept of monotheism, which now relegated polytheism—i.e., its own past, with all its spirit of law, and so forth—to the status of idolatry. This, to be sure, was already progress.
16
Here I should like to admit that my ideas concerning antiquity seem somewhat wild even to me. I understand polytheism in a simple, and therefore no doubt incorrect, fashion. For me, it is a system of spiritual existence in which every form of human activity, from fishing to contemplating the constellations, is sanctified by specific deities. An individual possessing appropriate will and imagination is thus able to discern in his activity its metaphysical, infinite lining. Alternatively, one or another god may, as the whim takes him, appear to a man at any time and possess him for a period. The only thing required of the latter, should he wish this to happen, is for him to "'purify" himself, so as to enable the visit to take place. This process of purification (catharsis) varies a great deal and has an individual character (sacrifice, pilgrimage, a vow of some kind) or a public one (theater, sporting contests). The hearth is no different from the amphitheater, the stadium from the altar, the statue from the stewing pan.
A world view of this kind can exist, I suppose, only in settled conditions: when the god knows your address. It is not surprising that the culture we call Greek arose on islands. It is no surprise, either, that its fruits hypnotized for a millennium the entire Mediterranean, including Rome. And it is not surprising again that, as its Empire grew, Rome —which was not an island—fled from that culture. The flight began, in fact, with the Caesars and with the idea of absolute power, since in that intensely political sphere polytheism was synonymous with democracy. Absolute power—autocracy—was synonymous, alas, with monotheism. If one can imagine an unprejudiced man, then polytheism must seem far more attractive to him than monotheism, if only because of the instinct of self- preservation.
But there is no such person; even Diogenes, with his lamp, would fail to find him in broad daylight. Bearing in mind the culture we call ancient or classical, rather than the instinct of self-preservation, I can only say that the longer I live the more this idol worship appeals to me, and the more dangerous seems to me monotheism in its pure form. There's little point, I suppose, in laboring the matter, in calling the spade the spade, but the democratic state is in fact the historical triumph of idolatry over Christianity.
17
Naturally, Constantine could not know this. I assume he intuited that Rome was no more. The Christian in him combined with the ruler in a natural and, I am afraid, prophetic manner. In that very "In this sign, conquer" of his, one's ear discerns the ambition of power. And it was "conquer'' indeed—more even than he imagined, since Christianity in Byzantium lasted ten centuries. But this victory was, I am sorry to say, a Pyrrhic one. The nahire of this victory was what compelled the Western Church to detach itself from the Eastern. That is to say, the geographical Rome from the projected one, from Byzantium. The Church the bride of Christ from the Church the spouse of the state. And it is quite possible that in his drive eastward Constantine was in fact guided by the East's political climate—by its despotism without any experience of democracy, congenial to his own predicament. The geographical Rome, one way or another, still retained some memories of the role of the senate. Byzantium had no such memory.
1 8
Today, I am forty-five years old. I am sitting stripped to the waist in the Lykabettos Hotel in Athens, bathed in sweat, absorbing vast quantities of Coca-Cola. In this city, I don't know a soul. In the evening, when I went out looking for a place to have supper, I found myself in the thick of a highly excited throng shouting something unintelligible. As far as I can make out, elections are imminent. I was shufHing along some endless main street blocked by people and vehicles, with car horns wailing in my ears, not understanding a word, and it suddenly dawned on me that this, essentially, is the afterlife—that life had ended but movement was still continuing; that this is what eternity is all about.