This study of Eusebius's political thought originated as a dissertation in Classics at King's College, London. It offers an impressively inclusive study of Eusebius's major works that pulls together the theme of the demonic in his thinking, a subject that has hitherto not received much attention. The author's overall purpose is to demonstrate how pervasive his preoccupation with demons and the demonic was, in order to challenge the “almost universal” conclusion of scholarship that he was “a triumphal optimist, who viewed the events of his own lifetime as the conclusion of human history” (11).

The book is organized in six clearly-written and well-researched chapters. Chapter 1 is a well-informed review of his life and works as seen by current scholarship. Chapter 2 treats his demonology. While admitting that it is not systematic (44), the author argues that for Eusebius the demons were “an active and dangerous presence in the universe” that constituted a grave threat to human beings (45). Chapter 3 emphasizes the element of “dualism” in Eusebius's conception of the demons' license to do harm and what that tells us about his view of theodicy, especially regarding persecution and martyrdom. Chapter 4 discusses Eusebius's conception of choice and moral responsibility as seen in the context of ancient philosophical debate. The author emphasizes how much Eusebius sees the contingency of human choice under the challenging influence of demonic constraints. Chapter 5 explains the place of the demons in human history and their impact on human progress with special attention to Eusebius's eschatology and the extent to which he saw the kingdom of God realized in his own time (145). Chapter 6 concludes with the implications of “the continuing demonic threat” (172) for Eusebius's political theology. Divine favor was decisive in the “closely fought battle against the demons” (202), but that divine favor depended on the piety, virtue, and orthodoxy of the emperor's mimesis of the cosmic rule of the Logos.

The author's training in classics shows to good advantage in the rich contextualizations of such topics as demons, free choice, tyranny, and slavery in classical and post-classical sources. She rightly notes their relevance to understanding an early Christian author as well read as Eusebius. She is also thoroughly informed about current scholarship on Eusebius and about the various controversies surrounding his most important writings, above all the nature of his relationship to Constantine and his understanding of the relationship between Christianity and the Roman Empire. She demonstrates this in her careful and balanced treatment of Eusebius's view of Constantine and of emperorship in general in the sixth and concluding chapter.

She seems less sure-footed in Christian literature, which may explain a tendency to overstate the uniqueness of Eusebius's ideas regarding subjects like demons, choice and responsibility, or theodicy, as compared with Christian predecessors. At times the reader has the sense of a scholar trying to find a problem where there may not be one. There is nothing unique, for example, in Eusebius's stress on the reality of free choice, however threatened—that was a staple element in Greek Christian apologetics—nor in his portrayal of the origin of the demons as fallen angels and as unremittingly evil—his account incorporates quite traditional elements. Portraying Eusebius as an incipient dualist, as she does in chapter 3 (78–81, 90–97), exaggerates his supposed difficulty in reconciling divine providence and demonic wickedness.

It does, however, serve the book's central intention to subvert descriptions of Eusebius as a triumphal optimist. The severity of the threat posed by the demons, along with human frailty, explains why Eusebius could not have envisioned his own time as the definitive realization of God's kingdom on earth. Even after Constantine's conversion, historical regression was entirely possible. Enriching her argument is the stress in her final chapter (190–191, 200–201) on the uncertain state of affairs at the end of Constantine's life when the dogmatic winds threatened to shift under his sons (Eusebius outlived Constantine by two years, and the Life of Constantine was possibly unfinished when Eusebius himself died in 339).

To the author's credit, she seeks to free Eusebius from an older tendency in scholarship to see him anachronistically as heralding the end of history (to borrow Francis Fukuyama's unfortunate usage), not in an apocalyptic fireball but in the eschatological peace of the Christian Roman Empire. As she realizes, revising such determinism and returning Eusebius to his own time and place is a goal of much current work on a prolific writer who was the leading Christian scholar of his era. She is to be commended for adding a new dimension to this trend by bringing to bear so many of his pronouncements on the enduring strength of the adversarial powers that Eusebius took very seriously indeed.

The Demonic in the Political Thought of Eusebius of Caesarea is written in a clear and readable style that is accessible to undergraduates. Its rather narrow historiographical focus, and Oxford's price, may make it more suitable for research collections.