Chapter 16
Oh, the pain of it — the shame of human error! Women, fugitives from their homeland, entered, overran and devastated Europe and Asia, that is, the largest and strongest parts of the world, and held them for almost a hundred years, overthrowing very many cities and founding others; and yet the misery of men was not then put down to the oppressiveness of the times.
1 Pro dolor, pudet erroris humani. mulieres patria profugae Europam atque Asiam, id est plurimas fortissimasque mundi partes, intrauerunt peruagatae sunt deleuerunt, centum paene annis euertendo urbes plurimas atque alias constituendo tenuerunt: nec tamen miseriae hominum pressura temporum deputata est.
But now those Getae who are now also called Goths — whom Alexander declared were to be avoided, whom Pyrrhus dreaded, whom even Caesar shunned — having left and emptied their own homes and entered the Roman provinces with their whole strength, all of them together, and having long been displayed before us as a terror, hope by prayers for a share in a Roman treaty which they could have claimed by arms.1
2 modo autem Getae illi qui et nunc Gothi, quos Alexander euitandos pronuntiauit, Pyrrhus exhorruit, Caesar etiam declinauit, relictis uacuefactisque sedibus suis ac totis uiribus toti Romanas ingressi prouincias simulque ad terrorem diu ostentati societatem Romani foederis precibus sperant, quam armis uindicare potuissent;
1Orosius follows the common late antique identification of the Goths with the Getae, a Thracian people of the lower Danube; the two were unrelated.
They ask for a place of modest habitation, not by their own choice but at our judgement — they to whom the whole earth lay subject and open, so that they were free to take as much as they pleased; they offer themselves for the defence of the Roman realm — they whom alone unconquered kingdoms feared.
3 exiguae habitationis sedem non ex sua electione sed ex nostro iudicio rogant, quibus subiecta et patente uniuersa terra praesumere, quam esset libitum, liberum fuit; semet ipsos ad tuitionem Romani regni offerunt, quos solos inuicta regna timuerunt.
And yet blind paganism, since it does not see that these things were achieved by Roman valour, does not believe that they were obtained by the faith of the Romans; nor, though it understands, will it consent to confess that by the benefit of the Christian religion — which binds all peoples together in a kindred faith — those men have been made subject to it without a battle whose women destroyed the greater part of the earth with immense slaughter.
4 et tamen caeca gentilitas cum haec Romana uirtute gesta non uideat, fide Romanorum inpetrata non credit nec adquiescit, cum intellegat, confiteri, beneficio Christianae religionis - quae cognatam per omnes populos fidem iungit - eos uiros sine proelio sibi esse subiectos, quorum feminae maiorem terrarum partem inmensis caedibus deleuerunt.
Chapter 17
Then, in the year 430 before the founding of the City, there came, as the story is told, the abduction of Helen, the confederacy of the Greeks and the gathering of a thousand ships, then the ten-year siege, and finally the famous destruction of Troy.
1 At uero ante urbem conditam CCCCXXX anno raptus Helenae, coniuratio Graecorum et concursus mille nauium, dehinc decennis obsidio ac postremo famosum Troiae excidium praedicatur.
In that war, waged most bloodily for ten years, what nations and how many peoples the same whirlwind engulfed and afflicted Homer, a poet of the first renown, has made plain in his most brilliant poem; nor is it for us now to tell it over in order, since it seems both too long for this work and known to all.
2 in quo bello per decem annos cruentissime gesto quas nationes quantosque populos idem turbo inuoluerit atque adflixerit, Homerus poeta in primis clarus luculentissimo carmine palam fecit, nec per ordinem nunc retexere nostrum est, quia et operi longum et omnibus notum uidetur.
Nevertheless, let those who have learnt of the length of that siege, the horror of its overthrow, the slaughter and the captivity, consider whether they are right to be offended by this present state of things, such as it is — when enemies who, by the hidden mercy of God, could pursue them with war across every land with their forces drawn up, instead follow them across every sea for the sake of peace, holding out hostages; and, lest they be thought to do this from love of quiet, offer themselves and their own dangers against other peoples for the peace of the Romans.
3 uerumtamen qui diuturnitatem illius obsidionis, euersionis atrocitatem caedem captiuitatemque didicerunt, uideant, si recte isto qualiscumque est praesentis temporis statu offenduntur quos hostes occulta misericordia Dei cum per omnes terras instructis copiis bello persequi possint, pacis gratia praetentis obsidibus per omnia maria sequuntur; et, ne forte haec quietis amore facere credantur, se ipsos ac pericula sua pro Romanorum pace aduersum alias gentes offerunt.
Chapter 18
A few years later, what arms the arrival in Italy of Aeneas, a fugitive from Troy, set in motion, what wars it stirred up over three years, how many peoples it entangled in hatred and afflicted with destruction, has been branded into our memory too by the lessons of the grammar school.
1 Paucis praeterea annis interuenientibus, Aeneae Troia profugi aduentus in Italiam quae arma commouerit, qualia per triennium bella exciuerit, quantos populos inplicuerit odio excidioque adflixerit, ludi litterarii disciplina nostrae quoque memoriae inustum est.
In the midst of these times, moreover, lie the exiles and shipwrecks of the Greeks, the disasters of the Peloponnesians, broken at the death of Codrus, the Thracians, unknown till then, rising up for new wars, and a general upheaval at that time throughout all Asia and Greece.
2 horum praeterea temporum medio interiacent exilia naufragiaque Graecorum, Peloponnensium clades Codro moriente fractorum, ignoti Thraces noua in bella surgentes et generalis tunc per totam Asiam Graeciamque commotio.