---
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: 117 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/117/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 117. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/117/"
---

# 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.

## 117. Book 6 · Chapter 5

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/117/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/117/#p-N

[¶0] In the Bosporus, while Mithridates was celebrating the rites of Ceres, so severe an earthquake suddenly arose that a great destruction of cities and fields is said to have followed from it.

> Latin: 1 In Bosforo Mithridate Cerealia sacra celebrante terrae motus adeo grauis repente exortus est, ut magna clades ex ea urbium atque agrorum secuta narretur.

[¶1] At the same time Castor, Mithridates’ prefect, who was in command at Phanagorium, killed the king’s friends, seized the citadel, and sent four of Mithridates’ sons over to the Roman garrisons.

> Latin: 2 eodem tempore Castor Mithridatis praefectus, qui Phanagorio praeerat, interfectis amicis regiis arcem occupauit et quattuor Mithridatis filios ad praesidia Romana transmisit.

[¶2] Mithridates, kindled with anger, blazed out into crimes. For he then killed a good many of his friends and his son Exipodras, having already before this butchered Machares in another parricide.

> Latin: 3 Mithridates accensus ira in scelera exarsit. nam conplures tunc amicos suos et Exipodram filium suum interfecit, cum antea iam alio Macharem parricidio trucidasset;

[¶3] Pharnaces, another of his sons, terrified by the example of his brothers, won over to himself the army sent to pursue him, and soon led it against his father.

> Latin: 4 Pharnaces alter filius eius exemplo fratrum territus exercitum ad persequendum sese missum sibi conciliauit et mox aduersus patrem duxit.

[¶4] Mithridates, having long and vainly entreated his son from the top of a very high wall, when he saw that he was inexorable, is said to have cried out as he was about to die: “Since Pharnaces orders me to die, I pray you, gods of my fathers, if you exist, that some day he too may hear this cry from his own children.” And at once, going down to his wives, his concubines and his daughters, he gave poison to them all.

> Latin: 5 Mithridates diu ex altissimo muro filium frustra precatus ubi inexorabilem uidit, moriturus exclamasse fertur: 'Quoniam Pharnaces', inquit, 'mori iubet, uos, si estis, di patrii, precor, ut quandocumque et ipse hanc uocem a liberis suis audiat'. statimque descendens ad uxores, pelices ac filias suas uenenum omnibus dedit.

[¶5] When he himself had drunk it last of all, and yet could not be finished off by the poison because of the antidotes with which he had often fortified his vitals against noxious juices, and was walking about in vain, in case the poison he had taken might by any means at last be driven through his veins by the motion of his body and spread, he called over a certain Gallic soldier who was running about, the wall now being broken through, and offered him his throat.

> Latin: 6 quod cum ipse nouissimus hausisset nec tamen propter remedia, quibus uitalia sua aduersus noxios sucos saepe obstruxerat, ueneno confici posset frustraque spatiaretur, siquo tandem modo infusa pestis per uenas uegetatione corporis acta discurreret, Gallum quendam militem iam fracto muro discurrentem inuitauit eique iugulum praebuit.

[¶6] Such was the end of life that Mithridates had; and he left us a most powerful argument for our view — he who was, as they say, the most superstitious of all men, seventy-two years old, and kept always about him philosophers and men most skilled in all the arts.

> Latin: 7 hunc exitum uitae Mithridates habuit nobisque sententiae suae fortissimum argumentum reliquit homo omnium, ut ferunt, superstitiosissimus, annos natus septuaginta et duo, habens secum semper philosophos omniumque artium peritissimos.

[¶7] “If you exist,” he said, “gods of my fathers.” Thus, by long worship and long inquiry, he had come to perceive that these who were thought to be gods were not certainly gods. A king of much experience and weighty with age, he did not understand the true God, to the knowledge of whom one comes only by hearing, through faith; but he had seen through these, by the light of reason itself, as false, assigning one thing to custom and another to his own mind.

> Latin: 8 Si estis, inquit, di patrii. ita ille diu colendo ac diu quaerendo persenserat hos non esse certos deos, qui esse putabantur. rex multae experientiae atque aeuo grauis uerum Deum, ad cuius notitiam non nisi auditu per fidem uenitur, non intellegebat. hos autem falsos esse rationis ipsius luce peruiderat, aliud consuetudini aliud menti suae tribuens.

[¶8] “If you exist, gods,” he said — that is to say: “I, perceiving that there is above man a power mightier than man himself, moved by the necessity of praying, commend my diligence and excuse my ignorance; I invoke him who is, while I address those who are not.”

> Latin: 9 si estis, inquit, di, hoc est dicere: ego sentiens esse super hominem potentiorem ipso homine potestatem, precandi necessitate motus commendo diligentiam et excuso ignorantiam meam; inuoco qui est, dum conuenio qui non est.

[¶9] Wherefore it must be considered with grief and fear: of what punishment or what judgement will they be worthy who, against the prohibition of a truth now made manifest and public, follow and worship those gods about whom even those men could already have doubts at that time, who as yet could know nothing besides them?

> Latin: 10 quapropter cum dolore et timore considerandum est: qua poena quoue iudicio digni erunt, qui contra interdictum iam propalatae et publicae ueritatis eos sectantur et colunt deos, de quibus etiam illi iam tunc dubitare poterant, qui adhuc praeter eosdem scire nil poterant.

[¶10] But let me ask briefly: what kind of times did those seem then to the whole East, when for forty years wretched nations were worn down by the alternate devastations of such great generals; when every city, set in the midst of such great clashes, was inevitably endangered, bound to inflame the one by the very means by which it had appeased the other, and soon to find a punishment in what for a time it had had as a remedy;

> Latin: 11 uerumtamen breuiter consulo: qualia tunc toto orienti tempora uidebantur, cum per quadraginta annos miserae nationes alternis tantorum ducum uastationibus terebantur; cum quaeque ciuitas tantis concursibus media ineuitabiliter periclitabatur, inde accensura alterum unde alterum temperasset, hoc mox habitura supplicii quod remedii ad tempus habuisset;

[¶11] when the anxious embassies of the various provinces were passed back and forth between the successive Roman generals and Mithridates — the more savage for being known — now to one and now to the other, as the fortune of war raised up each, with uncertain acts of submission, increasing the very dangers they were trying to heal?

> Latin: 12 cum trepidae diuersarum prouinciarum legationes inter succedentes Romanorum duces et truculentiorem notitia Mithridaten, alternis ad utrumque, prout quemque sors belli attollebat, et incertis satisfactionibus transferebantur augendo pericula quae sanabant?

[¶12] For what Pompey — and that Pompey, the most moderate of the Romans — did forthwith throughout very many parts of the East once the Mithridatic War was finished, I shall set forth in a few words.

> Latin: 13 nam quid continuo Pompeius et quidem Pompeius homo Romanorum moderatissimus per plurimas partes orientis finito Mithridatico bello egerit, paucis proferam.