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(Oratio XI.151a-152b)
Blessed, happy Constantine! Do you sense that for you the emperor (Valens) has turned the beloved from an inanimate to an animate state, and that against expectation he has breathed life into this beautiful and desirable body that was still feeble, to say it with Homer, and that for you the city is truly a city and no longer a mere sketch? You and your son were clever in finding for her and giving to her many and manifold girdles and necklaces and bracelets and torques. And lest bedecked with much gold and precious objects she be more thirsty than those who are dressed in rags, you would have made great expenditure, but this honour was preserved and left to another, since God took care that the thank-offering of the emperor did not appear second to the imperial garb, which the beautiful city had first fixed on him. Now both exchange rivalling gifts with one another and not gold for bronze but things of quite equal worth. And it is difficult to pronounce which of them is more precious. For famous and renowned poets agree with both, one calling the imperial rank godlike and the other declaring water the best thing. But the originator of both of you rejoices and revels in this rivalry. I hear that he enquires with joy about the number of the nymphs and the course in order that with you as a leader and guide they appear from here and there and are invited to the Bosphorus. And the names are Thracian and manly, but the beauty and the splendour are exceedingly delicate. And one is tempted to call Pirene and Thisbe mere chatter and that Alphius troubled himself in vain when loving Arethusa. And I did not see winged Victories and Amores in bronze or in stone or in colours, but God let grow wings on the emperor's virtues alone. Thus they come to us faster than thought and neither rocks hold them back nor narrows nor the tops of high mountains nor craggy cliffs nor lightless ravines, but they run underneath the ones and around the others and they fly high above the third and they have come together into one place and have welcomed each other and have made a pact to flow together to the temple that is Constantine's by name but is already Valens' as far as its construction is concerned. For by right the origin of each thing does not belong to the one who started it but to the one who completed it. You, however, have both begun the headpiece of good fortune for it and completed it. And before, as it seems, it did not deserve its name and when we used the epithet 'rich' it was idle words. But since your expenditure and your love of honour have called the nymphs inside and have settled them inside, they are not only rich but are already thrice rich.
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