Ninus reigned fifty-two years. He was succeeded, as I have said, by his wife Semiramis; and she, having herself reigned forty-two years, founded Babylon as the capital of the kingdom in the middle period of her rule.1
1 Regnauit Ninus annis LII. cui successit, ut dixi, uxor sua. Samiramis: quae cum et ipsa XLII annis regnauerit, medio imperii sui tempore Babylonam caput regni condidit.
1Orosius’s figures do not quite agree with 2.2.5: fifty-two years of Ninus and half of Semiramis’s forty-two give about seventy-three years from Ninus’s accession to the founding of Babylon, not sixty-four.
Thus Babylon, 1,160 and nearly four years after it had been founded, was despoiled of its wealth and its kingdom and deprived of its very king by the Medes and by Arbaces, their king but its own prefect; yet it afterwards remained unharmed for some time.2
2 ita Babylon post annos MCLX et propemodum quattuor, quam condita erat, a Medis et [ab] Arbato, rege eorum, praefecto autem suo, spoliata opibus et regno atque ipso rege priuata est: ipsa tamen postea aliquamdiu mansit incolumis.
2The Latin gives 1,160 years ‘and nearly four’. Orosius matches this with Rome: Alaric broke into the City in AD 410, which Orosius dates to the year 1164 from its founding (7.40.1).
In like manner Rome too, after the same number of years, that is, 1,160 and nearly four, was broken into and despoiled of its wealth — not of its kingdom — by the Goths and Alaric their king, but its own count; and it still remains and reigns unharmed,3
3 similiter et Roma post annos totidem, hoc est MCLX et [fere] quattuor, a Gothis et Alaricho rege eorum, comite autem suo, inrupta et opibus spoliata non regno, manet adhuc et regnat incolumis,
3Alaric had held Roman command (as magister militum in Illyricum), so Orosius can call him Rome’s ‘count’, as Arbaces had been the Assyrian king’s prefect.
although by secret decrees the order of the whole correspondence between the two cities has been preserved to such a degree that there its prefect Arbaces seized the kingdom, and here this city’s prefect Attalus attempted to reign; though in the case of this city alone, through the merit of a Christian emperor, the profane attempt was made void.4
4 quamuis in tantum arcanis statutis inter utramque urbem conuenientiae totius ordo seruatus sit, ut et ibi praefectus eius Arbatus regnum inuaserit et hic praefectus huius Attalus regnare temptarit; tametsi apud hanc solam merito Christiani imperatoris adtemptatio profana uacuata sit.
4Priscus Attalus, prefect of the City, was proclaimed emperor by Alaric in 409 and deposed by him in 410; the Christian emperor is Honorius.
I have therefore thought these things worth recalling above all for this reason: that, with so much of the ineffable judgements of God laid open in part, those who murmur so foolishly about the Christian times may understand that the one God disposed the times, both for the Babylonians at the beginning and for the Romans at the end; that it is of his clemency that we live, but of our own intemperance that we live wretchedly.
5 Itaque haec ob hoc praecipue commemoranda credidi, ut tanto ineffabilium iudiciorum Dei ex parte patefacto intellegant hi, qui insipienter utique de temporibus Christianis murmurant, unum Deum disposuisse tempora et in principio Babyloniis et in fine Romanis, illius clementiae esse, quod uiuimus, quod autem misere uiuimus, intemperantiae nostrae.
See: alike was the rise of Babylon and of Rome, alike their power, alike their greatness, alike their times, alike their goods, alike their evils; yet not alike their end, nor alike their decline. For the one lost its kingdom, the other keeps it; the one was bereaved by the killing of its king, the other is secure with its emperor unharmed.
6 ecce similis Babyloniae ortus et Romae, similis potentia, similis magnitudo, similia tempora, similia bona, similia mala; tamen non similis exitus similisue defectus. illa enim regnum amisit, haec retinet; illa interfectione regis orbata, haec incolumi imperatore secura est.
And why is this? Because there, in the king, the foulness of lust was punished, while here, in the king, the most continent equity of the Christian religion was preserved; there, without reverence for religion, the licence of fury glutted the greed for pleasure, while here there were Christians who spared, and Christians who were spared, and Christians for whose memory’s sake and in whose memorial places the sparing was done.
7 et hoc quare? quoniam ibi in rege libidinum turpitudo punita, hic Christianae religionis continentissima aequitas in rege seruata est; ibi absque religionis reuerentia auiditatem uoluptatis licentia furoris impleuit, hic et Christiani fuere, qui parcerent, et Christiani, quibus parcerent, et Christiani, propter quorum memoriam et in quorum memoria parceretur.
Let them therefore cease to tear at religion and to provoke the patience of God, by which they enjoy such forbearance that even this too may go unpunished, if only they desist at some point.
8 quapropter desinant religionem lacerare et lacessere patientiam Dei propter quam habent, uti et hoc quoque inpunitum habeant, si aliquando desistant.
Let them indeed recall with me the times of their ancestors: most turbulent with wars, execrable with crimes, foul with dissensions, most unbroken in their miseries — times at which they may rightly shudder, because they were, and for which they must of necessity pray that they may not come again;
9 recolant sane mecum maiorum suorum tempora, bellis inquietissima, sceleribus exsecrabilia, dissensionibus foeda, miseriis continuatissima, quae et merito possunt horrere, quia fuerunt, et necessario debent rogare, ne sint:
and pray, indeed, to the one God alone, who then by hidden justice permitted them to happen and now by open mercy grants that they should not be. These things will now be set out by me more fully from the very beginning of the City, unrolling the histories in their order.
10 eum sane rogare solum Deum, qui et tunc occulta iustitia permisit, ut fierent, et nunc aperta misericordia praestat, ut non sint. quae modo a me plenius ab ipso Urbis exordio, reuolutis per ordinem historiis, proferentur.