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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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38 Pages
Page 3
He concludes with an outspoken denunciation of the treatment of the virgins, and by an urgent entreaty to Constantius 'which supposes the imperial listener to be already more than half appeased' (Bright). The Apology is the most carefully written work of Athanasius, and 'has been justly praised for its artistic finish and its rhetorical skill' as well as for the force and the sustained calmness and dignity of its diction. (So Montfaucon, Newman, Gwatkin, &c. Fialon, pp. 286, 292, gives some interesting examples of apparent imitation of Demosthenes in this and in the two following tracts.) But the violent contrast between its almost affectionate respectfulness and the chilly reserve of the Apol. pro Fuga, or still more the furious invective of the Arian History, is startling, and gives a prima facie justification to Gibbon, who (vol. 3, p. 87, Smith's Ed.) charges the great bishop with simulating respect to the emperor's face while denouncing him behind his back. But although the de Fuga (see introd. there) was written very soon after our present Apology, there is no ground for making them simultaneous, while its tone (see Ap. Fug. 26, note 7) is very different from that of the later Hist. Arian. Doubtless much of the material for the invectives of the latter was already ancient history when the tract before us was composed. But Constantius was the Emperor, the first personage in the Christian world, and Athanasius with the feeling of his age, with the memory of the solemn assurances he had received from the Emperor (S:S:23, 25, 27, Apol. Ar. 51-56, Hist. Ar. 21-24), would 'hope all things,' even 'against hope,' so long as there was any apparent chance of influencing Constantius for good; would hope in spite of all appearances that the outrages, banishments, and intrigues against the faith of Nicaea were the work of the officers, the Arian bishops, the eunuchs of the Court, and not of 'Augustus' himself (see Bright, Introd. to this Apology, pp. lxiii.-lxv.).
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/defence-constantius.asp?pg=3
