Rather like the original work that it treats, this addition to the Sources Chrétiennes series has a complex redaction history. While Eusebius of Caesarea's fourth-century Life of Constantine is a single-authored work whose motivations and form changed during its production, over its twenty-year gestation period this new volume has had a fixed form but multiple authors. The translation was originally produced by Marie-Josèphe Rondeau to stand alongside an introduction and annotations by Charles Pietri. On the death of the latter in 1991 Rondeau gave the translation to his widow, Luce Pietri. The final volume therefore consists of Friedhelm Winkelmann's now-standard GCS edition of (with nine adjustments, listed on p143), Rondeau's translation (revised by Bernard Meunier), and an introduction and notes by Luce Pietri.

Pietri's extensive six-part introduction discusses the current state of scholarship on the Life (pp. 9–20), its composition (pp. 21–30), sources (pp. 31–58), genre (pp. 59–66), ‘certainties, silences and ambiguities’ (pp. 67–102), as well as Constantine's place in Eusebius’ thought (pp, 103–12). The volume also provides a bibliography (including editions and translations of the Life, and primary and secondary sources referenced in the discussion, pp. 115–39), the post-Eusebian chapter headings (pp. 145–75), a timeline (pp. 547–50), and scriptural, prosopographical and geographical indices (pp. 551–64). Also included as part of the introduction are useful tables of Eusebius’ speeches (pp. 27–8), Constantine's letters (pp. 37–39) and Constantine's laws in the Life (pp. 46–8).

Much of this volume is excellent. Winkelmann's text remains unsurpassed and Rondeau's translation is of a high quality. Pietri's introduction discusses complex issues with a light but well-informed touch and comes to judgements largely in line with scholarly consensus (most importantly, for example, concerning Constantine's balancing of sincere faith with political pragmatism). The notes are of a similar high quality, glossing the text usefully without overburdening the casual reader.

The volume's flaws are only in how it compares with recent publications in the same field. There has been no French translation of the Life since that of Louis Cousin in 1675. But this new volume will be judged not against that but against the 1999 translation and commentary of Averil Cameron and Stuart Hall that has rapidly become the standard point of entry to the Life.Footnote ¹ This is not in itself a problem; Gustave Bardy's Sources Chrétiennes volume on Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical history remains a must-read work for scholars even though Geoffrey Williamson's Penguin English translation (with introduction by Andrew Louth) is more widely disseminated.Footnote ² In the current case, however, this volume of the Life offers neither a comprehensive update to Cameron and Hall nor a noticeably different approach.

It has been twenty years since Cameron and Hall wrote and much has been published on both Eusebius and Constantine since. But Pietri's discussion here makes only selective use of that work. Continental scholarship is well represented (with regular appeal to Pierre Maraval in particular).Footnote ³ But many Anglophone works are noticeably absent. The omission of the most recent edited collection on Eusebius or David Potter's monograph on Constantine are understandable;Footnote ⁴ those of the earlier monographs on Constantine by Raymond Van Dam, for example, or the articles in the Cambridge Companion to Constantine, edited by Noel Lenski, less so.Footnote ⁵ In particular, Van Dam's monograph, teasing out the relationships between the different accounts of Constantine's conversion and his hypothesis that by the time that he spoke with Eusebius decades later Constantine's own memory of events had been moulded by the memorialisations and interpretations of the intervening years, would have been invaluable for Pietri's discussion of the conversion.

Similarly disappointing is simply that this volume fails to move the debate on the Life of Constantine forward. The explosion of interest in Eusebius over the last decade has increased our knowledge of Eusebius’ style, method of quotation, intertexuality and intellectual commitments, and this new volume presented a good opportunity for returning to the Life of Constantine with fresh questions. But the approach taken here, perhaps the result of the book's fragmented production process, means that its discussion is still rooted in the questions asked and almost all answered at the end of the twentieth century by Barnes, Cameron, Drake and Hall (and which are dealt with more clearly and in more detail in Cameron and Hall's volume). Little account is taken of the newer questions about literary aspects of the Life, tentatively raised by Cameron in the 1990s but not addressed fully there or since.Footnote ⁶ In the light of the Eusebian ‘new wave’ these questions have become both more pressing and more answerable. In particular, the Life might be fruitfully compared with Eusebius’ approach to biography in the Ecclesiastical history given recent fascinating work done on the ‘Life of Origen’ in book vi of that work.Footnote ⁷

This is a worthy addition to the Sources Chrétiennes series, though it is unlikely to replace Cameron and Hall as the standard introduction to the Life. And while it reaches Eusebius’ high standards of scholarship, it does not quite match his desire for literary innovation.