---
title: "Seven Books of History against the Pagans"
author: "Paulus Orosius"
translator: "S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026)"
title_ru: "История против язычников"
title_fr: "Histoires contre les païens"
title_de: "Sieben Bücher Geschichte gegen die Heiden"
languages: [la, en]
shelf: "Church Fathers"
section: 112 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/112/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 112. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/112/"
---

# Seven Books of History against the Pagans

*Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026)*

Russian: История против язычников · French: Histoires contre les païens · German: Sieben Bücher Geschichte gegen die Heiden

Augustine's pupil tells the whole of world history to prove that the Christian times are not the worst.

## 112. Book 5 · Chapter 24

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/112/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/112/#p-N

[¶0] In the year 679 from the founding of the City, in the consulship of Lucullus and Cassius, seventy-four gladiators escaped at Capua from the training school of Gnaeus Lentulus; under the leadership of Crixus and Oenomaus, Gauls, and of Spartacus, a Thracian, they at once seized Mount Vesuvius; bursting out from there, they stormed the camp of the praetor Clodius, who had invested them by siege, and, having put him to flight, carried off everything as plunder.

> Latin: 1 Anno ab urbe condita DCLXXVIIII Lucullo et Cassio consulibus gladiatores septuaginta et quattuor Capuae a ludo Cn. Lentuli diffugerunt: qui continuo ducibus Crixo et Oenomao Gallis et Spartaco Thrace Vesuuium montem occupauerunt; unde erumpentes Clodii praetoris, qui eos obsidione cinxerat, castra expugnarunt, ipsoque in fugam acto cuncta in praedam auerterunt.

[¶1] Then, making their way round through Consentia and Metapontum, they gathered enormous columns in a short time. For Crixus is reported to have had a multitude of ten thousand, and Spartacus three times that number; Oenomaus had already been killed in an earlier battle.

> Latin: 2 inde per Consentiam et Metapontum circumducti, ingentia breui agmina collegerunt. nam Crixo decem milium multitudo, Spartaco autem triplex tunc numerus fuisse refertur. Oenomaus enim iam in superiore bello fuerat occisus.

[¶2] So, while they were throwing everything into confusion with slaughter, burning, plunder, and rape, at the funeral of a captive matron who had killed herself in grief at her violated chastity, they put on a gladiatorial show with four hundred captives — those, namely, who would have been the spectators were now to be the spectacle — like trainers of gladiators rather than leaders of soldiers.

> Latin: 3 itaque cum caedibus incendiis rapinis stuprisque omnia miscerent, in exsequiis captiuae matronae, quae se dolore uiolati pudoris necauerat, munus gladiatorium ex quadringentis captiuis scilicet qui spectandi fuerant spectaturi, utpote lanistae gladiatorum potius quam militum principes, ediderunt.

[¶3] Then the consuls Gellius and Lentulus were sent against them with an army; of these Gellius crushed in battle Crixus, who fought most fiercely, while Lentulus, overcome by Spartacus, fled. Afterwards both consuls, having joined their forces in vain, suffered a heavy defeat and fled. Next the same Spartacus crushed the proconsul Gaius Cassius in battle and killed him.

> Latin: 4 deinde consules Gellius et Lentulus aduersum eos cum exercitu missi, quorum Gellius Crixum acerrime pugnantem proelio oppressit, Lentulus a Spartaco superatus aufugit. post etiam conlatis frustra ambo consules copiis, accepta graui clade, fugerunt. dehinc C. Cassium proconsulem idem Spartacus oppressum bello interfecit.

*Note: Gaius Cassius Longinus, governor of Cisalpine Gaul, was defeated by Spartacus near Mutina in 72 BC but escaped with his life; Orosius has him killed.*

[¶4] And so, with the City terrified by a fear almost no less than that with which it had trembled while Hannibal raged about its gates, the senate sent Crassus with the consuls’ legions and a fresh supplement of soldiers.

> Latin: 5 itaque exterrita ciuitate non minore propemodum metu, quam sub Hannibale circa portas fremente trepidauerat, senatus Crassum cum legionibus consulum nouoque supplemento militum misit.

[¶5] As soon as he engaged the fugitives in battle, he killed six thousand of them and captured nine hundred. Then, before attacking Spartacus himself, who was pitching camp at the source of the river Silarus, he overcame his Gallic and German auxiliaries, killing thirty thousand of them together with their leaders.

> Latin: 6 is mox ut fugitiuorum pugnam iniit, sex milia eorum interfecit, nongentos uero cepit. inde priusquam ipsum Spartacum ad caput Silari fluminis castra metantem bello adgrederetur, Gallos auxiliatores eius Germanosque superauit, e quibus XXX milia hominum cum ipsis ducibus occidit.

[¶6] Finally he engaged Spartacus himself in drawn-up battle and struck down both him and the very great forces of fugitives with him. For sixty thousand of them are reported to have been slain and six thousand captured, while three thousand Roman citizens were recovered.

> Latin: 7 nouissime ipsum Spartacum disposita acie congressum maximasque cum eo fugitiuorum copias perculit. nam sexaginta milia eorum caesa, sex milia capta referuntur, tria milia ciuium Romanorum recepta sunt.

[¶7] The rest, who had slipped away from this war and were wandering about, were worn down by a number of generals in repeated hunts.

> Latin: 8 ceteri, qui ex hoc bello lapsi oberrabant, per conplures duces frequenti indagine attriti sunt.

[¶8] But I repeat it again and yet again: do the times here too stand in need of any comparison? Who, I ask, would not shudder to hear — I will not say of such wars, but even of so many names of wars: foreign, servile, social, civil, and of fugitives?

> Latin: 9 At ego iterum ac saepius repeto: num quidnam et hic conparatione aliqua egent tempora? quis rogo audire non horreat non dicam bella talia, sed uel nomina tanta bellorum, externa, seruilia, socialia, ciuilia, fugitiuorum?

[¶9] These do not even follow one another as the waves of a stirred-up sea follow, however great their masses, but, roused and heaped together on every side by diverse causes, names, forms, and evils, they rush together.

> Latin: 10 quae ne sic saltem sese, ut commoti maris fluctus quamuis molibus magnis sequuntur, sed undique diuersis causis uocabulis formis malisque excitata coaceruataque concurrunt.

[¶10] To begin again from the nearest, and to pass over that infamous servile war: the Jugurthine war had not yet finished thundering from the south-west when the Cimbric was already flashing its lightning from the north-west.

> Latin: 11 ut e proximo repetam et infame illud seruile praeteream, Iugurthinum bellum nondum adhuc ab Africo perdetonuerat, iam Cimbricum a circio fulminabat.

[¶11] From those Cimbric clouds foul and vast torrents of shed blood were still being driven, when wretched Italy was already breathing out the mists of the Social War, which were soon to gather into great storm-clouds of evils.

> Latin: 12 de Cimbricis illis nubibus adhuc foedi uastique torrentes effusi sanguinis agebantur, iam socialis belli nebulas in magna continuo malorum nubila coituras misera exhalabat Italia.

[¶12] And still, after the endless and repeated storm of the Italian war, it was scarcely possible to travel safely through Italy, so did everything totter in a loose and slippery peace, quite apart from those most perilous whirlpools of hostile cities;

> Latin: 13 adhuc uero post infinitam crebramque Italici belli tempestatem discurri tuto per Italiam minime poterat, ita omnes absque illis periculosissimis inimicarum urbium uoraginibus dissoluta ac lubrica pace titubabant;

[¶13] already Rome was in labour with her destruction at the hands of Marius and Cinna, and another destruction, from the opposite quarter, the east and the north-east — namely the Mithridatic — was threatening; and this Mithridatic war, begun in the earlier times, stretches on further into later ones.

> Latin: 14 iam sibi Marianum atque Cinnanum Roma parturiebat excidium, aliudque e diuerso oriens atque aquilo, hoc est Mithridaticum, minabatur, quod quidem Mithridaticum a superioribus coeptum porro in ulteriora porrigitur.

[¶14] From the Marian torch the pyre of Sulla’s disaster was kindled; from that most deadly pyre of Sulla and of the civil war burning brands were scattered through very many parts of the world, and spread many conflagrations from a single tinder.

> Latin: 15 de Mariana face rogus Syllanae cladis accensus est, de isto rogo funestissimo Syllani et ciuilis belli per plurimas terrarum partes ardentes sudes sparsi sunt multaque incendia ex uno fomite diffuderunt.

[¶15] For Lepidus and Scipio in Italy, Brutus in Gaul, Domitius, Cinna’s son-in-law, in Africa, Carbo in Cossura and Sicily, Perperna in Liguria and afterwards with Sertorius in Spain, and, most atrocious of all, Sertorius in that same Spain, stirring up these wars — civil, or by whatever other name they should be called — made many out of one, and great ones out of a great one;

> Latin: 16 nam Lepidus et Scipio in Italia, Brutus in Gallia, Domitius Cinnae gener in Africa, Carbo in Cossura et Sicilia, Perpenna in Liguria et post cum Sertorio in Hispania, omniumque atrocissimus Sertorius in eadem Hispania haec tunc ciuilia, uel quo alio dicenda sunt nomine, bella excitantes, de uno multa, de magno magna fecerunt;

[¶16] not counting those three vast wars which were then called foreign — the Pamphylian, the Macedonian, and the Dalmatian — and passing over, too, that great Mithridatic war, by far the [longest,] most dangerous, and most dreadful of all;

> Latin: 17 absque illis tribus uastissimis bellis, quae tunc externa uocabantur, hoc est Pamphylico Macedonico atque Delmatico, dissimulato etiam magno illo Mithridatico longe omnium [diuturno] infestissimo ac formidulosissimo;

[¶17] then, while the Sertorian war in Spain was not yet finished — nay, while Sertorius himself was still alive — this war of fugitives, or, to speak more truly, of gladiators, rose bristling, no longer a thing to be watched by a few, but to be feared everywhere.

> Latin: 18 deinde, adhuc Hispaniensi Sertoriano nondum finito immo adhuc ipso uiuente Sertorio, hoc fugitiuorum et, ut uerius dicam, gladiatoricium bellum inhorruit, iam non spectandum paucis sed ubique metuendum.

[¶18] Because it is called a war of fugitives, let no one hold it cheap on account of its name: in it the consuls were often defeated singly, and once both together, their columns joined in vain, and very many nobles were slaughtered; while of the fugitives themselves more than a hundred thousand were slain.

> Latin: 19 quod quia fugitiuorum bellum dicitur, nemini uile habeatur ex nomine: saepe in eo singuli et aliquando simul cum agminibus frustra iunctis ambo consules uicti sunt plurimique nobiles trucidati; ipsi autem fugitiui plus quam centum milia fuere qui caesi sunt.

[¶19] From this we admonish Italy to console herself for her present harassment by foreign enemies by recalling those of her own in the past, who, sprung from her and turned against her, tore her very self apart incomparably more cruelly.

> Latin: 20 ex quo admonemus ut ipsa se consoletur Italia de uexatione externorum praesentium per recordationem praeteritorum ex se atque in se et ipsam se inconparabiliter crudelius dilacerantum suorum.

[¶20] For this reason I shall now bring this fifth volume to an end, so that the civil wars, everywhere intermingled with foreign ones — both those already told and those that follow — since they have clung together in the sequence of the times and in evils following one upon another, may at least be separated by the boundary of a book.

> Latin: 21 Quamobrem huic nunc quinto uolumini iam finem fecerim ut bella ciuilia externis ubique permixta, uel quae dicta sunt uel etiam quae sequuntur, quia sic sibi serie temporum et malis sequacibus cohaeserunt libri saltem termino separentur.