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The Genos of Demons and ‘Ethnic’ Identity in Eusebius' ‘Praeparatio Evangelica’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

HAZEL JOHANNESSEN
HAZEL JOHANNESSEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS; e-mail: hazel.johannessen@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article offers a new perspective on Eusebius' understanding of Christian identity by demonstrating that in the Praeparatio evangelica he presents human and demonic genē as comparable. Although the prominence of the language of ‘ethnicity’ to describe human groups in the Praeparatio has previously been highlighted, Eusebius' presentation of demons in similar terms has not yet been examined. Eusebius' descriptions of the demonic genos show that he held ‘ethnic’ identity, including Christian identity, to be linked above all to a creature's moral condition and to require the maintenance of particular patterns of behaviour.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , January 2015, pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 
DE

Demonstratio evangelica

HTR

Harvard Theological Review

JECS

Journal of Early Christian Studies

PE

Praeparatio evangelica

Dismissed for many years as little more than a dull and turgid compendium of quotations from earlier writers,Footnote 1 Eusebius of Caesarea's fifteen-book apology, the Praeparatio evangelica, has come in recent years to benefit from a surge in scholarly interest.Footnote 2 In line with broader recognition of the complex role played by ‘apologetic’ literature in shaping early Christian identity,Footnote 3 the way in which the Praeparatio sought to articulate a new identity for Christians, distinct from both paganism and Judaism, has particularly been emphasised.Footnote 4 Building on these insights, this article will highlight how a study of an under-explored feature of the Praeparatio – its discussions of demons – can enhance our understanding of Eusebius' views on Christian identity and virtue. In doing so, it will also suggest that we need to question the widespread presentation of Eusebius as unreservedly triumphalist in his vision of Christianity.Footnote 5

Recent scholarship by Aaron Johnson and Eduard Iricinschi has highlighted in particular the importance of ‘ethnic’ language and ideas in the presentation of Christian identity in Eusebius' apologetic works.Footnote 6 Rather than seeing the Praeparatio as primarily concerned with distinguishing between alternative religious positions, Johnson suggests that Eusebius sought to define Christianity in ethnic terms in opposition to other alternative ethnic or national identities, such as the Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians and Jews.Footnote 7 As has been widely recognised, Eusebius goes to considerable lengths in the Praeparatio to present the Christians as the descendants of the Hebrews, an ancient, virtuous and therefore, in Eusebius' eyes, superior nation.Footnote 8 At the same time, he seeks to distinguish between the Jews and the Hebrews,Footnote 9 suggesting that, despite their descent from the Hebrew patriarchs, the Jewish nation failed to match the high standards of virtue and piety exercised by these earlier figures.Footnote 10 Similarly, the Greeks are shown as a comparatively recent nation, dependent for their culture and theology on earlier nations, particularly the Phoenicians and the Egyptians.Footnote 11 Even the very best of Greek culture is said by Eusebius to be, in origin, not Greek, but Hebrew.Footnote 12 In this way Eusebius both undermines Greek claims to authority and superiority based on antiquity, and counters criticisms that Christianity was a recent innovation which rejected ancient customs.Footnote 13 He suggests instead that Christianity represented a return to a better, ancient nation, thereby claiming for the Christians the superiority of both virtue and antiquity.Footnote 14

In using the language of ethnicity in his apologetics, Eusebius was far from alone. Denise Kimber Buell has shown that it was quite common for early Christian apologists to express their identity in ethnic terms, describing themselves as part of a new Christian ethnos or genos.Footnote 15 This, Buell suggests, could hold several advantages for the apologists. Firstly, since religious practice and ritual were often held to form part of ethnic identity in antiquity, the language of ethnicity provided a useful means by which Christian authors could establish the boundaries of Christianity in terms which would have been readily comprehensible to their audiences.Footnote 16 Secondly, and perhaps more important, Buell suggests that in antiquity it was widely agreed that a person's ethnicity could be subject to change.Footnote 17 This meant that conversion to Christianity could be described in ethnic terms and that Christianity could be presented as a nation that was open to the members of all other nations.Footnote 18 Thus, where scholars had traditionally suggested that early Christianity aimed to break down ethnic barriers, Buell shows that in fact the early apologists sought to position the new Christian ‘nation’ within a world of nations established by existing discussions of ethnicity.Footnote 19

Of course, as many of those studying ancient ideas of ‘ethnicity’ have recognised, this concept, along with related modern ideas such as ‘race’ and ‘nationhood’, is highly problematic.Footnote 20 The study of ancient ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ has, in the past, been driven by the assumption that such categories were fixed and either geographically or biologically determined.Footnote 21 With such an assumption rightly discredited after the 1940s, more recent work in this area has stressed that ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ are not fixed or predetermined constants, but rather negotiable constructs.Footnote 22 The study of ancient ideas of ethnicity – rather than ancient ‘ethnicities’, as though these were fixed and recoverable – must therefore be based on an initial consideration of the terminology employed by ancient writers.Footnote 23 This is, in itself, a challenging task. Demonstrating the fluidity of ideas of ethnicity, the ancient terminology of genos and ethnos does not translate neatly or consistently into the modern terms of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ or ‘nation’.Footnote 24 Despite the fact that the English ‘ethnicity’ is derived from the Greek word ethnos, J. M. Hall has noted that the ancient term had a variety of applications which bear no relation to modern ideas of what ‘ethnicity’ might be.Footnote 25

Moreover, even within the works of a particular author, the terms genos and ethnos could be used in a variety of ways, often with considerable overlap between them.Footnote 26 This, of course, makes careful attention to the context in which these various words are used of paramount importance. It also raises the problem of translation.Footnote 27 While ethnos is often translated as ‘nation’ and genos as ‘race’,Footnote 28 any modern term will bring the risk of anachronism if used consistently in place of one of the ancient terms. Rather than trying to translate ethnos and genos consistently as either ‘nation’ or ‘race’ and risk distorting their original meaning by fitting them into a modern conceptual framework, I will therefore attend closely to the ways in which Eusebius used these terms in an attempt, as far as possible, to reflect his own usage.

Both terms – genos and ethnos – appear frequently throughout the Praeparatio, often seeming to be almost synonymous.Footnote 29 Their usage suggests that, regardless of the term that he employed, Eusebius held certain elements to be essential to defining ethnic groups, including the notions of shared descent and culture.Footnote 30 However, perhaps in view of its derivation from the verb gignesthai, meaning ‘to be born’ or ‘to become’,Footnote 31genos on occasion appears to contain slightly more emphasis on the importance of descent and origins.Footnote 32 In addition, Johnson has suggested that in the Praeparatio genos, as opposed to ethnos, could also have a non-ethnic sense, and be used instead simply to refer to a generic ‘class or category’.Footnote 33 Nevertheless, it seems that overall Eusebius conceived of those groups which he labelled genē and ethnē in largely similar ways.Footnote 34 Thus, groups such as the Hebrews and Jews are referred to as either genē or ethnē at different points in the Praeparatio.Footnote 35 Moreover, Eusebius also clearly understood the Christians in these terms, despite limited references to this group as either an ethnos or a genos in the Praeparatio.Footnote 36 Eusebius suggests that Christians also form a genos when he claims that, in Christianity, all humankind might come together as ‘the same nation’ (ὁμογενῆ).Footnote 37 Crucially, he also seeks to distinguish the Christians from other groups, particularly the Greeks and the Jews, which he does label genē or ethnē.Footnote 38 Thus it seems that, for Eusebius, a variety of human groups, including the Christians, are to be seen as ‘ethnic’.

However, despite the prominence of the language of ‘ethnicity’ in the Praeparatio, previous scholarship has overlooked the striking application of similar ‘ethnic’ terminology to the group of demons, which are repeatedly described as a genos in this work.Footnote 39 This failure to consider Eusebius' references to demons in ‘ethnic’ terms is, however, far from surprising; it simply reflects the more general lack of interest which has hitherto been shown in Eusebius' ideas of the demonic. Although demons appear frequently throughout a number of Eusebius' works, particularly the Praeparatio, the role that they play in his thought more broadly has been largely overlooked.Footnote 40 This is perhaps the result of a continuing reluctance on the part of scholars to accept that a writer like Eusebius, praised for his ‘rational’ approach,Footnote 41 could have held such a supposedly ‘irrational’ belief as the belief in demons.Footnote 42 This is a problem which Dayna Kalleres has already noted in relation to other ‘sophisticated’ urban writers of the fourth century, particularly Gregory of Nazianzus.Footnote 43 However, in ignoring the role of the demonic in Eusebius' works we risk missing valuable insights into other aspects of his thought. In his work on early modern demonology, Stuart Clark demonstrated that ideas about demons could be ‘good to think with’, allowing writers and intellectuals of the period to explore ideas on other subjects, such as politics and the law.Footnote 44 Thus, by paying closer attention to Eusebius' remarks on the demonic, we can hope to learn more about his understanding of other topics traditionally of interest to Eusebian scholars – in this case, his construction of ‘ethnic’ identity.

It is perfectly plausible that demons should have been considered to form a genos in a similar manner to humans, for at the time when Eusebius was writing, the belief in demons as a physical – albeit intangible – reality was widespread. As G. A. Smith has demonstrated, demons, while usually invisible, were widely held to have material, physical bodies.Footnote 45 Δαίμονες had a long history in non-Christian thought, and were widely regarded within the Platonic tradition as morally neutral, or even benevolent spiritual intermediaries, whose role was to bridge the divide between the mortal and the divine, transmitting messages between them.Footnote 46 For early Christians like Eusebius, however, the term acquired a far more negative aspect, coming to represent the deceptive pagan gods and spiritual enemies of the pious.Footnote 47 I have therefore opted throughout for the English demon rather than daemon to describe these beings, on the grounds that the negative connotations of demon more accurately reflect Eusebius' view of demons as unambiguously malevolent than would the more neutral daemon.Footnote 48

By focusing on the physicality of demons, Smith's article highlights the value of an approach which avoids treating late antique descriptions of the demonic merely as metaphors or ‘figures of speech’.Footnote 49 It is clear that Eusebius, like many of his contemporaries, was convinced of the physical reality of demons from his suggestion in the Praeparatio that demons feed on the smoke and blood of animal sacrifices,Footnote 50 echoing the views earlier expressed by Origen.Footnote 51 Moreover, some at least of Eusebius' demons actually inhabit the recognisable physical world, for he describes how they ‘are fond of living by the tombs of the dead and by their memorials and in all polluted and impure undergrowth’.Footnote 52 Thus demons are not a distant, other-worldly phenomenon for Eusebius, but a real and active part of the world that he and his readers inhabit. Recognising the physical reality of the demonic for Eusebius and his contemporaries is important because, if demons are believed to be in their own way as physical as human beings, it is more likely that they might also be classified and categorised in similar ways – as, for instance, a genos.

Of course, the variety of uses to which the term genos is put in the Praeparatio means that, in spite of the comparable physicality of demons and humans for Eusebius, we cannot simply assume that Eusebius understood the demonic genos to be similar to those human genē which he describes. Indeed, Johnson, while noting the application of genos to demons in the Praeparatio, nevertheless dismisses this use of the term as simply ‘generic’ in sense because it does not convey the idea of a familial group.Footnote 53 However, as Johnson himself argued, there was far more to Eusebius' understanding of an ‘ethnic’ genos than simply ‘biological connections’,Footnote 54 and a re-examination of Eusebius' descriptions of demons throughout the Praeparatio suggests that we should not be so quick to dismiss the demonic genos. In fact, it is clear that the genos of demons also displays several of the characteristics which scholars have previously identified as key to establishing human ethnic identity in the Praeparatio – namely, shared descent or history,Footnote 55 the allocation of distinctive names to different nations,Footnote 56 and shared character and behaviour.Footnote 57

In what follows, I will first explore these parallels between demonic and human genē in order to establish that it is legitimate to regard the demonic genos as equivalent to human genē in the Praeparatio. I will then ask what an examination of the demonic nation can add to our understanding of Eusebius' views on human ethnic identity. Comparing Eusebius' description of the demons' origins with his discussion of the Christians, I will suggest that Eusebius saw ethnic identity as reflective of and dependent upon a person's moral condition. As such, it might be subject to change for either better or worse. This sense that a person's membership of a particular nation, including the Christian nation, might in consequence be somewhat precarious leads us to question the common characterisation of Eusebius as complacently triumphalist in his presentation of the Church.Footnote 58

Demonic and human genē

In line with the importance that he attaches to the shared descent and kinship of human nations, Eusebius similarly emphasises the joint origins of the demonic genos in the Praeparatio. Eusebius makes it clear at several points in the Praeparatio that he believes demons to be derived from angels, asserting that ‘they introduce the nation (genos) of demons and all the class of the contrary and depraved forces from the falling away and deviation of these [angels and archangels]’.Footnote 59 The demonic genos thus has a single, shared point of origin – the fall of the angels. Yet, despite the ontological connection between angels and demons, Eusebius insists that the ‘nation of depraved demons’ (τοῦ τῶν δαιμόνων μοχθηροῦ γένους) must be considered entirely separate from the angels,Footnote 60 on the grounds that ‘it would be most unreasonable of all that one and the same name should be fitting for things which are similar neither in their choice (prohairesis) nor in the nature from their behaviour (tropos)’.Footnote 61 It seems that, at least in this instance, Eusebius held the difference between nations to be rooted primarily in matters of character or behaviour. It was these that in his view lay at the root of the distinction between the angels and the demons and led to the creation of an entirely new genos.

The idea that a genos might divide and develop along separate lines such that a completely different genos could come into existence is strikingly paralleled in Eusebius' discussion of the genē of the Hebrews and Jews. At Praeparatio vii.6·1, Eusebius seeks to distinguish between these two groups, suggesting that there was a difference between ‘the ancestors of the Jews' (τοῖς Ἰουδαίων προπάτορσιν) and the Jewish genos that came after Moses. He claims that ‘it is good to articulate this, that Judaism did not exist at all at that point, but those I am describing were Hebrews in name as much as in character (tropos), and they were not yet Jews nor were they proclaimed so’.Footnote 62 For Eusebius, as many scholars have noted, a distinction between the Jews and the Hebrews was crucial to the apologetic argument of the Praeparatio.Footnote 63 By denying that the Jews were the same as the Hebrews, Eusebius could claim the virtuous Hebrew patriarchs as the exclusive ancestors of the Christians instead.Footnote 64 What is striking about this passage is the way in which Eusebius characterises the supposedly separate genē of the Hebrews and the Jews by their tropos. He suggests that it is only once the tropos – the character, habits or customsFootnote 65 – of the Jews becomes distinct from the tropos of the Hebrews that a separate genos of the Jews comes into being.Footnote 66 Thus, we find a similar emphasis on the key role of a group's tropos in determining its identity in Eusebius' descriptions of both demonic and human genē. Most importantly for our inquiry, it is clear that in his understanding of how various nations might be formed Eusebius saw little difference between demonic and human genē.

Furthermore, we see in both of these passages a similar emphasis on the importance of the name by which a genos was known. Twice in the Praeparatio, Eusebius explores the etymology of the name ‘Hebrew’, both times offering two possible derivations.Footnote 67 The first, he suggests, is that the name came from one of the ancestors of the nation, the biblical figure of Heber. The alternative, more interesting option, is that the name could be interpreted to mean ‘one who crosses over’ (διαπερῶν), since according to Eusebius ‘both a crossing over and the one who crosses over are named according to the Hebrew language “Heber”’.Footnote 68 This meaning, Eusebius suggests, related closely to the character of the people that it described, because the Hebrews ‘are interpreted as some sort of emigrants, setting out upon a crossing from perception of the things of the present to that of the things of the God of all’.Footnote 69 This etymological suggestion was not Eusebius' own; Johnson notes that Philo had offered a similar explanation of the name in his De migratione Abrahami.Footnote 70 By combining these two possible explanations for the name, which point to two key features of ethnic identity for Eusebius – shared origins and shared character – Johnson suggests that Eusebius was seeking to draw a clear distinction between the Hebrews and the Jews.Footnote 71 For our purposes, however, it is Eusebius' suggestion that the names of human nations might reveal and reflect something of the character of that nation that is striking, because we find the same idea appearing in his discussion of the demonic nation.

At Praeparatio iv.5·4–5 Eusebius emphasises that angels and demons are to be known by different names. Moreover, as in the case of the Hebrews, Eusebius stresses that the name by which each group is designated is in some way appropriate to its character and activities. As intermediary spiritual beings, angels are known by the ‘accurate, middling name of angels of God, and helpful spirits, and divine powers, and archangels and other such signifiers according to their activities'.Footnote 72 By contrast, the demons must have a different name because of the difference in their tropos. Moreover, just as Eusebius explores the etymology of the name ‘Hebrew’, so he seeks to explain the name by which the demons are known:

τοὺς μέντοι δαίμονας, εἰ δὴ καὶ τούτων ἡμᾶς προσήκει τὴν ἐτυμολογίαν ἐξειπεῖν, οὐχ ᾗπερ Ἕλλησι δοκεῖ παρὰ τὸ δαήμονας εἶναι καὶ ἐπιστήμονας, ἀλλ’ ἢ παρὰ τὸ δειμαίνειν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ ϕοβεῖσθαι καὶ ἐκϕοβεῖν, δαίμονάς τινας προσϕυῶς ὀνομάζεσθαι.Footnote 73

[the demons, however, if it is even proper for us to explain the etymology of these, are fittingly called demons, not, as it seems to the Greeks, because they are knowledgeable and skilled, but for fear, since they fear and cause fear.]

It seems most likely that Eusebius drew the ‘Greek’ etymology of the name δαιμών from a discussion in Plato's Cratylus, although he does not specifically cite this work as his source.Footnote 74 In his own explanation of the name, however, Eusebius rejects this as inappropriate to the demonic genos and supplies instead an alternative which in his view better suits the character and behaviour of the demons who form this nation. Elsewhere in the Praeparatio, Eusebius again suggests that the demons ‘are called by names which correspond to the depravity of their tropos’.Footnote 75 Thus we can see that, for Eusebius, the name of a genos, whether demonic or human, was closely tied to the character of that group. The demonic genos, just like that of the Hebrews, was designated by an appropriate collective name, suggesting once again that it is legitimate to see the demonic nation as similar in Eusebius' view to human nations. For Eusebius, the demonic genos, like human genē, was thus defined both by its origins and by its distinctive and appropriate name.

Moreover, as for Eusebius' human nations, we find the demonic genos in the Praeparatio bound together by a shared character and similar range of activity. At several points in the Praeparatio, Eusebius is careful to stress that demons are, without exception, wicked. He describes the genos of demons as a whole as ‘depraved’ (μοχθηρός),Footnote 76 and insists that the scriptures ‘never name any demon whatsoever as good’.Footnote 77 Furthermore, the depravity of the demons was manifested for Eusebius in particular patterns of behaviour. He suggests that their wickedness took the form above all of hatred of God and opposition to his plans.Footnote 78 Moreover, he believes that ‘the evidence of their hostility to God lies in their wish to have themselves publicly proclaimed as gods and to snatch away God's honours for themselves’.Footnote 79 Thus Eusebius suggests that the wickedness and impiety of the demons leads them to try to usurp the position of the true Christian God by encouraging polytheistic worship. The genos of demons is linked for Eusebius by a distinctive and, in his view, unmistakably demonic range of activity in which their wickedness is plainly revealed.

It is therefore clear that Eusebius saw many parallels between the genos of demons and various human genē. Although demons differ from humans both in their powers and in the extent of their wickedness, there are clear similarities in Eusebius' understanding of how demonic and human genē might be formed. Like Eusebius' human nations, the genos of demons had joint origins, a distinctive name, and a particular range of activities. As a result, it seems safe to conclude that human genē and the demonic genos were seen by Eusebius as equivalent. Moreover, Johnson suggests that in the Praeparatio the ‘ethnic conceptualisation of genos … denotes either a people internally connected by biological kinship, or a people who have a particular external relationship to piety and truth’.Footnote 80 In view of the demons' shared origins, as well as their ‘depraved’ character and unshakable impiety, the demonic genos appears to meet these two criteria and consequently it seems that we should consider Eusebius' application of the term genos to demons as ‘ethnic’ in its import.

Choice and character

Having established that the demonic genos was seen by Eusebius as equivalent to human genē, we may now ask what an examination of Eusebius' presentation of the genos of demons can reveal about his understanding of ethnic identity more broadly. In particular, we must consider whether it can offer us any insights into Eusebius' understanding of Christian collective identity. Scholars including Jorg Ulrich have already highlighted the importance of piety and virtuous behaviour for Eusebius' demarcation of the Hebrew genos, suggesting that this even outweighs genealogical descent for Eusebius.Footnote 81 Job, for instance, is included in a list of the Hebrew patriarchs on account of his piety,Footnote 82 despite not being descended from Hebrew forebears.Footnote 83 More broadly, Johnson stresses that the idea of a distinctive ‘national character’ is an essential element of Eusebius' conception of many human nations.Footnote 84 This idea that shared character and behaviour might be crucial in delineating the boundaries of a genos is certainly reflected in Eusebius' description of the origin of the demonic genos at Praeparatio iv.5·4–5, where, as we have seen, he highlights the importance of the demons' tropos in determining both the existence, and the name, of the demonic nation as distinct from that of the angels. However, this passage also suggests that there was another key factor at work in Eusebius' understanding of how a nation might be created, one which has not hitherto been recognised – that is, prohairesis. Eusebius makes it clear when discussing the demonic genos that the demons differ from angels not only in their tropos, but also in their prohairesis.

Prohairesis was a concept of considerable significance in Eusebius' thought, yet, much like genos, it does not translate straightforwardly into modern conceptual categories. Lampe offered ‘deliberate choice’, ‘motive’, ‘intention’ and ‘disposition’ as possible translations of prohairesis,Footnote 85 while in modern versions of Eusebius, we often find it rendered as ‘free will’.Footnote 86 This is itself a notoriously difficult concept to define, even today, and applying it to the thought of ancient authors is even more problematic. Recent scholarship has highlighted the risks involved in applying the term ‘free will’ to the period in which Eusebius was writing. Rather than seeing ‘free will’ as a natural and universal notion which would have therefore been shared by ancient societies, scholars like Michael Frede have demonstrated instead that ‘free will’ was a mutable, invented concept by tracing its development across various centuries and through numerous authors.Footnote 87 As a result, to translate prohairesis in Eusebius' works as ‘free will’ is to impose an anachronistic modern concept on his thought and to risk obscuring Eusebius' ideas behind centuries of later philosophical speculation.

Nevertheless, Eusebius refers to prohairesis with enough frequency to allow us to recover in some detail what he must have understood by the term. Prohairesis, for Eusebius, was associated with freedom, as we can see from the way in which he frequently couples the term, or associated words for choice such as hairesis, with adjectives like eleutheros (free) and autexousios (self-determined).Footnote 88 It represented, moreover, a choice between alternative options, as Eusebius makes clear in his Demonstratio evangelica when he asserts that God created ‘human souls possessing unconstrained freedom of self-determined choice between the good and the opposite’.Footnote 89 Crucially, it seems that for Eusebius the freedom with which prohairesis was associated gave the concept considerable moral significance. In order for a man to merit praise for undertaking a daring expedition, Eusebius suggests that it is necessary that the venture should have been undertaken ‘out of his personal prohairesis' (ἐκ προαιρέσεως οἰκείας), rather than out of necessity.Footnote 90 Eusebius then compares this with morally reprehensible actions, such as grave-robbing, implying that the free prohairesis by which such actions are undertaken is what makes them worthy of blame and punishment.Footnote 91 Thus, prohairesis is linked for Eusebius to the attribution of punishment or reward, and hence would have been significant in his view in determining whether a person would achieve salvation or not. In considering prohairesis to carry significant moral weight, Eusebius was not alone among early Christian writers. Tatian had similarly suggested that ‘freedom of prohairesis’ (τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ τῆς προαιρέσεως) was necessary in order to ensure that the bad might be punished for their wicked actions, while the good could be rewarded for choosing to follow God.Footnote 92 Overall, it therefore seems that we should read prohairesis in Eusebius as a freely-made choice of moral significance.

This is revealing for Eusebius' understanding of ethnic identity, for it shows that he considered a creature's ethnicity – its membership of a particular genos – to be something for which it might legitimately be judged, since its ethnicity depended at least in part on a prohairesis, a morally significant choice, to be part of that nation. Of course, Eusebius appears determined throughout the Praeparatio to establish beyond question the wickedness of demons. It is therefore possible that he might have chosen to emphasise their prohairesis when describing their origins in order to stress that they must bear responsibility for their fall from the angels. However, Eusebius does not use prohairesis only to define the demonic genos in the Praeparatio; crucially, he also suggests that it might be used to characterise the Christians. At the beginning of the Praeparatio, Eusebius promises to reveal to his readers who the Christians are ‘in our character (tropos) and choice (prohairesis) of life’.Footnote 93 Here, we again find prohairesis and tropos combined to mark the boundaries of a particular group, just as they are linked in the discussion of demonic origins at Praeparatio iv.5·5. Although Eusebius does not specifically refer to the Christians as a genos at Praeparatio i.2·1, he does not use an alternative collective term for them here either, referring instead simply to ‘we who have obtained leave to write’.Footnote 94 Moreover, it is clear that he is thinking here of the Christians as an ethnic group similar to other human genē because he is seeking in this passage to distinguish them from the ‘Greeks’ and the ‘barbarians’. As a result, it seems that, for Eusebius, both prohairesis and tropos were significant for determining membership of a genos. A creature's ethnic identity was therefore morally significant and would have implications for whether or not it would be saved.

Eusebius and Origen

In Eusebius' suggestion that a person's membership of a particular genos might be the result of their own free personal choice, we are perhaps seeing a reflection of his intellectual debt to Origen. Eusebius' high regard for Origen, made clear in his ‘biography’ of Origen in book vi of the Historia ecclesiastica,Footnote 95 as well as the two writers' historical connections through the maintenance of the library at Caesarea, are well known,Footnote 96 and there are clear similarities in their views on both ethnicity and the role of demons in the universe. Looking to prove that God, as sole creator of the universe, was ‘good and just and omnipotent’, Origen had argued in his De principiis that all souls had been originally created equal.Footnote 97 Apparent differences were to be attributed solely to their own ‘free will’, which led some to imitate, and others to reject God.Footnote 98 Buell suggests that, for Origen, such arguments formed part of an ‘intra-Christian polemic’,Footnote 99 directed against alternative Christian groups which, he claims, held human differences, particularly ethnic differences, to be fixed and predetermined.Footnote 100 For Origen, then, the idea that a person's ethnicity could be changed by an act of ‘free will’ was central to his understanding of Christian orthodoxy. Unfortunately, since we only have Rufinus' Latin translation of this passage, it is impossible to know how closely Origen's original Greek here may have related to Eusebius' own vocabulary of prohairesis, freedom and responsibility.

However, later in the De principiis, where the Greek does survive, we see Origen linking a person's ethnic identity directly to their prohairesis, just as Eusebius was later to do. Suggesting that a person's ethnicity might be open to change, such that Egyptians might ‘progress’ to become Israelites, Origen suggests that ‘according to this, some advance from worse to better through their choices (prohaireseis), while the others fall down from better to worse’.Footnote 101 Thus we find in Origen a connection, similar to that in Eusebius, between prohairesis, morality and ethnicity. There is also the clear implication, as Buell noted, that some genē were to be considered superior to others and more likely to be saved.Footnote 102 For both Origen and Eusebius, then, a person's ethnic identity was a reflection of their moral choices and hence was connected to the likelihood of their achieving salvation.

Moreover, for Origen, this capacity to attain a superior or inferior condition as a result of moral choice was not limited solely to humans. Rather, in Origen's cosmology, a creature's moral choices determined not simply which human genos it joined, but even whether it was human, demonic or angelic.Footnote 103 For Origen, the position of a soul in this spiritual hierarchy was dependent upon how far it had fallen from its first unity with God – the angels having fallen the least – and how much progress it had made in its journey back towards God.Footnote 104 Thus a human soul that made enough moral progress might transfer, not only to a ‘superior’ human genos, but even to the genos of the angels;Footnote 105 by contrast, one that fell too far might find itself among the wicked spiritual powers.Footnote 106 Unlike Origen, Eusebius does not directly discuss the possibility of souls moving between the various genē of humans, angels and demons. Nevertheless it is clear from the Demonstratio evangelica that Eusebius also believed a soul's bodily form and location within the universe to be determined by its level of virtue.Footnote 107 Similarly, we can see in the Praeparatio that Eusebius shared Origen's view of salvation as a restoration of the soul's lost unity with God – a restoration achieved through the practice of ‘piety’ (eusebeia) and ‘virtue’ (arete).Footnote 108 It is therefore far from implausible to suggest that Eusebius may, like Origen, have believed that the most virtuous could attain the status of angels and the most wicked that of demons.

Whether or not Eusebius believed that souls might move between the various genē of humans, angels and demons, two important points have emerged from this study of human and demonic genē. First, it is clear that Eusebius believed people to have some measure of control over which genos they belonged to. By exercising their free prohairesis, people could change their ethnic identity. This link between prohairesis and ethnicity meant, however, that they could also be held accountable for their membership of a particular genos, which would thus be relevant for their salvation. Second, the link between ethnicity and tropos Footnote 109 meant that a person's national identity required constant maintenance. It was not determined solely by a one-off choice to join a particular nation, such as the Christians, but also by continually justifying one's membership of that genos through the behaviour appropriate to that group.

This sets Eusebius' understanding of Christian identity in an unexpected new light. The idea of ethnic mutability is usually said to have been useful to the apologists because it allowed them to present Christianity as open to all.Footnote 110 Indeed, Johnson suggests that the presentation of Christianity as an ‘open’ nation was a ‘recurrent theme’ of the Praeparatio.Footnote 111 However, the example of the demonic genos in Eusebius is a reminder that this ability to switch nations might also work in the opposite direction. The demons had forsaken their membership of the angelic genos by making the wrong choices, and by failing to maintain the standard of behaviour necessary to their continued membership of that superior group. Hence, by failing to maintain a virtuous lifestyle, the members of another privileged genos – the Christians – might also risk falling back into another, and, in Eusebius' eyes, less worthy genos, thereby jeopardising their salvation. Of course, this message too might hold advantages for a writer who wished to encourage the maintenance of high standards of virtue as a defining feature of Christian identity. Thus, within the Praeparatio, the genos of the demons could serve as a warning to Christians of the need to attend constantly to their behaviour and lifestyle. In accepting baptism, they may have already chosen to join the Christian nation, but that was only part of what was necessary to be a true Christian – the other part lay in demonstrating their membership through virtuous tropos.

We are accustomed to thinking of Eusebius as a rather complacent triumphalist, who, with Constantine's patronage of the Church after 324, was eager to celebrate the triumph of Christianity and the climax of human history.Footnote 112 This picture is based largely on the unmistakably celebratory tone of Eusebius' later, panegyrical works, the Vita Constantini and De laudibus Constantini. However, Eusebius' presentation of the demonic genos in the Praeparatio suggests that we might need to modify this picture somewhat. While clearly open to the idea that all humankind could attain a higher moral status in choosing to join the Christian nation, he appears to have been far from complacent about how easy it might be to maintain that status. In the Praeparatio, it is clearly implied that membership of a particular nation was dependent on the maintenance of appropriate standards of behaviour. Thus, membership of the Christian nation would require the constant exercise of virtue. It is, of course, perfectly possible that Eusebius' perspective might have changed between writing the Praeparatio before Constantine's triumph in the east and writing the Vita Constantini in the late 330s.Footnote 113 Indeed, some scholars have argued in the past for a development in Eusebius' thought on various topics in the light of changing political circumstances.Footnote 114

However, a close reading of the Vita suggests that, at least in his understanding of what was required of the ‘true’ Christian, Eusebius' views had not changed significantly. In this work, Eusebius criticises those who had ‘insinuated themselves into the church and fraudulently assumed (schēmatizomenōn) the name of Christians', in a challenge which appears to be directed at half-hearted recent converts.Footnote 115 These people were not, in Eusebius' view, true Christians, who lived up to the name that they had adopted by exercising virtue. As a result, they had only taken the outer form, the schēma, of Christians – this was not enough, in Eusebius' eyes, to make them true members of the Christian nation. Clearly, Eusebius was not blind to the fact that imperial favour might bring challenges as well as benefits to the Christian Church, recognising that the numbers of churchgoers might be swelled by those whom he would have been reluctant to see as members of the true Christian genos.

Footnotes

1 For example E. H. Gifford, Preparation for the Gospel, Grand Rapids, Mi 1981, i, p. xvii; Wallace-Hadrill, D. S., Eusebius of Caesarea, London1960, 139–40; and Foakes-Jackson, F. J., Eusebius of Caesarea: a study of the man and his writings, Cambridge1933, 128.

2 Examples of studies which rely heavily on the Praeparatio include Johnson, A. P., Ethnicity and argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica, Oxford2006; ‘Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica as literary experiment’, in Johnson, S. F. (ed.), Greek literature in late antiquity: dynamism, didacticism, classicism, Aldershot2006, 67–89; and ‘Identity, descent and polemic: ethnic argumentation in Eusebius' Praeparatio evangelica’, JECS xii (2004), 23–56; Ulrich, J., Euseb von Caesarea und die Juden: Studien zur Rolle der Juden in der Theologie des Eusebius von Caesarea, Berlin1999; and Inowlocki, S., ‘Eusebius's appropriation of Moses in an apologetic context’, in Graupner, A. and Woter, M. (eds), Moses in biblical and extra-biblical tradition, Berlin2007, 241–55.

3 Cameron, Averil, ‘Apologetics in the Roman Empire: a genre of intolerance?’, in Carrié, J. M. and Lizzi Testa, R. (eds), ‘Humana sapit’: études d'antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini, Turnhout2002, 223; Petersen, A. K., ‘The diversity of apologetics: from genre to a mode of thinking’, in Jacobsen, A.-C., Ulrich, J. and Brakke, D. (eds), Critique and apologetics: Jews, Christians and pagans in antiquity, Frankfurt2009, 16.

4 Johnson, Ethnicity; Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 37–8; Inowlocki, ‘Eusebius's appropriation of Moses’, 241.

5 See, for example, Trompf, G. W., Early Christian historiography: narratives of retributive justice, London2000, 124–5; Eger, H., ‘Kaiser und Kirche in der Geschichtstheologie Eusebs von Cäsarea’, Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft xxxviii (1939), 97–115; Wallace-Hadrill, Eusebius, 182; Johnson, A. P., ‘The ends of transfiguration: Eusebius’ Commentary on Luke (PG xxiv.549)’, in Johnson, A. P. and Schott, J. M. (eds), Eusebius of Caesarea: tradition and innovations, Cambridge, Ma2013, 196Footnote n. 23; and Barnes, T. D., Constantine and Eusebius, Cambridge, Ma1981, 102, 104–5.

6 Johnson, Ethnicity; Iricinschi, E., ‘Good Hebrew, bad Hebrew: Christians as triton genos in Eusebius’ apologetic writings’, in Inowlocki, S. and Zamagni, C. (eds), Reconsidering Eusebius: collected papers on literary, historical and theological issues, Leiden2011, 69–86.

7 Johnson, Ethnicity, 17, 24.

8 Inowlocki, S., Eusebius and the Jewish authors: his citation technique in an apologetic context, Leiden2006, 109–15; Johnson, Ethnicity, 94–125, 227–32; Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 60, 66; Iricinschi, ‘Good Hebrew’, 69–70.

9 For example, PE vii.6.1. See Johnson, Ethnicity, 107–9, 114–19; Iricinschi, ‘Good Hebrew’, 78; Inowlocki, Jewish authors, 111; and Sirinelli, J., Les Vues historiques d'Eusèbe de Césarée durant la période prénicéene, Dakar1961, 147–9.

10 PE vii.8.37. See Johnson, Ethnicity, 119, and Sirinelli, Vues historiques, 147.

11 PE ii.1.51–5. See Johnson, Ethnicity, 55–93, and Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 70.

12 PE xi.8.1. See Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 79, and Johnson, Ethnicity, 130–6.

13 Johnson, Ethnicity, 58–9; Inowlocki, Jewish authors, 109–10; Iricinschi, ‘Good Hebrew’, 71.

14 Johnson, Ethnicity, 232; Inowlocki, Jewish authors, 109.

15 Buell, D. K., Why this new race? Ethnic reasoning in early Christianity, New York2005, 2; cf. her ‘Rethinking the relevance of race for early Christian self-definition’, HTR xciv (2001), 449–76, and ‘Race and universalism in early Christianity’, JECS x (2002), 429–68.

16 Idem, ‘Rethinking’, 451, 473, and Why?, 35.

17 Idem, ‘Rethinking’, 451. Johnson notes that Eusebius similarly believed that people could switch ethnic groups: Ethnicity, 54.

18 Buell, ‘Rethinking’, 473, cf. Why?, 2–3.

19 Idem, ‘Rethinking’, 473; cf. Johnson, Ethnicity, 198–200.

20 Buell, ‘Rethinking’, 449–53; Hall, J. M., Ethnic identity in Greek antiquity, Cambridge1997, 1–3; Johnson, Ethnicity, 25–33.

21 Hall, Ethnic identity, 1.

22 Footnote Ibid. 2. See also the discussion in Johnson, Ethnicity, 25–33.

23 Johnson, Ethnicity, 33–4.

24 Hall, Ethnic identity, 34–6; Johnson, Ethnicity, 25; Buell, ‘Rethinking’, 456 Footnote n. 20.

25 Hall, Ethnic identity, 34.

26 A. P. Johnson has demonstrated this in the case of Porphyry: Religion and identity in Porphyry of Tyre: the limits of Hellenism in late antiquity, Cambridge 2013, 192.

27 Johnson recognises this in Ethnicity, 25, 33.

28 As by Johnson, Ethnicity. G. W. H. Lampe offers ‘family’, ‘class’ or ‘race’ for γένος and ‘nation’ or ‘people’ for ἔθνος: A patristic Greek lexicon, Oxford 1961 at pp. 313, 407 respectively.

29 I am heavily indebted to Johnson's detailed study of these terms in the Praeparatio: Ethnicity, 33–54.

30 Footnote Ibid. 54.

31 Hall, Ethnic identity, 35; Johnson, Ethnicity, 35.

32 Johnson, Ethnicity, 50, citing PE i.5.10; cf. Footnote n. 28 above.

33 Johnson, Ethnicity, 35.

34 Footnote Ibid. 48–51. This is also true of other early Christian writers: Buell, Why?, 2, and ‘Race and universalism’, 433.

35 For example genos: PE i.9.15; vii.6.1; ix.10.1; ethnos: PE i.3.13; viii.10.18; xii.47.1.

36 Johnson finds it ‘disappointing’ that there are so few references to Christianity as either an ethnos or a genos in the Praeparatio, although given that this work is primarily concerned with outlining the identities of Christianity's ‘others’, rather than of Christianity itself, he suggests that this is far from surprising: Ethnicity, 221.

37 PE i.4.11.

38 For example PE i.2.1; i.2.4; i.5.10.

39 See, for example, PE iv.5.1; iv.5.5; xiii.15.1; xiii.15.7.

40 Notable exceptions include S. L. Coggan, ‘Pandaemonia: a study of Eusebius’ recasting of Plutarch's story of the “death of great Pan”’, unpubl. PhD diss. Syracuse 1992, and the brief remarks of Johnson at Ethnicity, 163–70. However, both focus on Eusebius' polemical use of the demonic to attack the foundations of pagan religion and therefore miss the opportunity to explore how Eusebius' understanding of demons interacted with his thought on other topics.

41 See, for example, Chesnut, G. F., The first Christian histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius, Paris1977, 163.

42 MacMullen, R. suggested that beliefs in demons and magic led to ‘a darkness of irrationality’, although he was prepared to acknowledge that Christian thinkers including Eusebius shared such beliefs: ‘Constantine and the miraculous’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies ix (1968), 92. For the early modern period Stuart Clark has noted that earlier scholars often considered the topics of witchcraft and demonology to be ‘somehow peculiar and historically unassimilable’: Thinking with demons: the idea of witchcraft in early modern Europe, Oxford 1997, p. viii.

43 Kalleres, D. S., ‘Demons and divine illumination: a consideration of eight prayers by Gregory of Nazianzus’, Vigiliae Christianae lxi (2007), 157–88.

44 Clark, Thinking with demons, p. viii.

45 Smith, G. A., ‘How thin is a demon?’, JECS xvi (2008), 479–512.

46 For a useful survey of Platonic demonology see Timotin, A., La Démonologie platonicienne: histoire de la notion de daimon de Platon aux derniers néoplatoniciennes, Leiden2012. The key passage on demons as messengers was Plato, Symposium 202d–e.

47 On the ‘gods’ as ‘demons’ see Psalm xcv (xcvi).5, discussed by Origen, Contra Celsum 3.2; 1 Corinthians x.20; Justin 1 Apologia 5.2; and Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos 8, 18. The literature on the development of early Christian ideas about demons and the devil is now extensive. Highlights include Flint, V., ‘The demonisation of magic and sorcery in late antiquity: Christian redefinitions of pagan religions’, in Flint, V., Gordon, R., Luck, G. and Ogden, D., Witchcraft and magic in Europe: ancient Greece and Rome, London1999, 277–348; Pagels, E., ‘Christian apologists and “the fall of the angels”: an attack on Roman imperial power?’, HTR lxxviii (1985), 301–25, and The origin of Satan, New York 1995; and Reed, A. Y., Fallen angels and the history of Judaism and Christianity: the reception of Enochic literature, Cambridge2005.

48 Cf. Brakke, D., Demons and the making of the monk: spiritual combat in early Christianity, Cambridge, Ma2006, 5. Brakke, for the same reason, also prefers the translation ‘demon’. On Eusebius' unambiguous view of demonic malevolence see p. 11 below.

49 Smith, ‘How thin?’, 482.

50 PE v.2.1.

51 Origen, Exhortation to martyrdom 45, cited in Smith, ‘How thin?’, 483. Further parallels between the views of Origen and Eusebius will be discussed in greater detail at pp. 14–16 below.

52 PE v.2.1.

53 Johnson, Ethnicity, 36.

54 Footnote Ibid. 48.

55 Iricinschi, ‘Good Hebrew’, 72; Johnson, Ethnicity, 48.

56 Johnson, Ethnicity, 48, 114–16.

57 Footnote Ibid. 48; Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 61–3.

58 See Footnote n. 5 above.

59 PE xiii.15.1, cf. vii.16.2; vii.16.7.

60 PE iv.5.4.

61 PE iv.5.5.

62 PE vii.6.1.

63 For example Johnson, Ethnicity, 108, and Inowlocki, ‘Eusebius's appropriation of Moses’, 246.

64 Johnson, Ethnicity, 227–32.

65 For the full range of meanings of this term see H. G. Liddell and R. Scott (eds), A Greek–English lexicon, 9th edn, rev. H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie, Oxford 1996, 1827.

66 Johnson similarly noted this: Ethnicity, 119.

67 PE vii.8.20–1; xi.6.39.

68 PE xi.6.39.

69 PE vii.8.21.

70 Johnson, Ethnicity, 115, citing De migratione Abrahami 20.

71 Johnson, Ethnicity, 116.

72 PE iv.5.4.

73 Footnote Ibid.

74 Plato, Cratylus 398b. For discussion of the alternative etymologies of both Plato and Eusebius see Riley, G. J., ‘Demon’, in Van Der Toorn, K., Becking, B. and Van Der Horst, P. W. (eds), Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible, Leiden1995, 445–55.

75 PE vii.16.2.

76 PE iv.5.1; iv.5.4; xiii.15.1.

77 PE iv.5.4.

78 PE vii.16.10.

79 Footnote Ibid; cf. Porphyry, De abstinentia 2.42.2. I am grateful to the anonymous reader for this Journal for highlighting this parallel with Porphyry.

80 Johnson, Ethnicity, 39.

81 Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 60, 63; cf. Johnson, Ethnicity, 40, 106.

82 PE vii.8.30.

83 Ulrich, Euseb und die Juden, 63; Johnson, Ethnicity, 40.

84 Johnson, Ethnicity, 54.

85 Lampe, Lexicon, 1133–4.

86 See, for example, Gifford, Preparation, 214 (PE v.9.12), 266 (PE vi.6.34), 274 (PE vi.6.72).

87 Frede, M., A free will: origins of the notion in ancient thought, ed. Long, A. A., Berkeley2011; cf. Sorabji, R., Emotion and peace of mind: from Stoic agitation to Christian temptation, Oxford2000; Bobzien, S., ‘The inadvertent conception and late birth of the free will problem’, Phronesis xliii (1998), 133–75.

88 For example PE vi.6.41; vi.6.63; vi.6.72; vii.18.8.

89 DE iv.1.4. Eusebius, Die demonstratio evangelica, ed. I. A. Heikel, Eusebius Werke, iv, GCS xxiii, Leipzig 1913.

90 PE vi.6.1.

91 Footnote Ibid.

92 Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos 7, ed. E. Schwartz, Leipzig 1888.

93 PE i.2.1.

94 Footnote Ibid.

95 On this see Cox, P., Biography in late antiquity: a quest for the holy man, Berkeley1983, 69–101.

96 On the library and associated scholarship at Caesarea see Carriker, A. J., The library of Eusebius of Caesarea, Leiden2003, 1–36, and Grafton, A. and Williams, M., Christianity and the transformation of the book: Origen, Eusebius and the library of Caesarea, Cambridge, Ma2006. On Eusebius' attitude towards the legacy of Origen see most recently Penland, E. C., ‘The history of the Caesarean present: Eusebius and narratives of Origen’, in Johnson, A. P. and Schott, J. M. (eds), Eusebius of Caesarea: tradition and innovations, Cambridge, Ma2013, 83–95.

97 De principiis ii.9.6: Origène, Traité des principes, ed. with introduction and translation by H. Crouzel and M. Simonetti, SC cclii–ccliii, cclxviii–cclxix, Paris 1978–80; cf. De principiis i.6.3.

98 ‘arbitrii liberi, libertas uoluntatis’: De principiis ii.9.6. On Origen's cosmology see Muehlberger, E., Angels in late ancient Christianity, Oxford2013, 33–4.

99 Buell, Why?, 126.

100 Footnote Ibid. 123–6, citing De principiis ii.9.5–6; iii.1.23; cf. Buell, ‘Rethinking’, 470–1.

101 De principiis iii.1.23.

102 Buell, Why?, 125–6.

103 De principiis i.5.1–5.

104 Muehlberger, Angels, 34.

105 De principiis i.8.4.

106 Footnote Ibid. i.5.5.

107 DE iv.1.4.

108 PE vii.18.9–10. The parallels between the views on apokatastasis of Eusebius and Origen are examined by Ramelli, I., The Christian doctrine of apokatastasis: a critical assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, Leiden2013, 307–31.

109 This was previously highlighted by Johnson, Ethnicity, esp. pp. 93, 109–10.

110 Buell, ‘Rethinking’, 451, and Why?, 138–65.

111 Johnson, Ethnicity, 213–14.

112 For examples see Footnote n. 5, above.

113 For dating see Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 277–9.

114 For example Eger, ‘Kaiser und Kirche’, and Tabbernee, W., ‘Eusebius’ “theology of persecution”: as seen in the various drafts of his Church history’, JECS v (1997), 319–34.

115 Vita Constantini iv.54.2; Eusebius, Uber das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin, ed. F. Winkelmann, Eusebius Werke, i, 2nd edn, GCS vii, Berlin 1975.

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