---
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: 30 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/30/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 30. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/30/"
---

# 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.

## 30. Book 2 · Chapter 9

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/30/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/30/#p-N

[¶0] Xerxes, succeeding his father Darius on the throne, spent five years preparing the war against Greece that his father had undertaken; this was betrayed to his countrymen by Demaratus the Lacedaemonian, who happened then to be living in exile with Xerxes, by means of tablets written on first and then covered over with wax.

> Latin: 1 Xerxes Dario patri in regnum succedens bellum aduersus Graeciam a patre susceptum per quinquennium instruxit; quod Demaratus Lacedaemonius, qui tunc forte apud Xerxen exulabat, per tabellas primum scriptas deinde ceratas suis prodidit.

[¶1] Xerxes, then, is said to have had 700,000 armed men from his kingdom and 300,000 from his auxiliaries, as well as 1,200 beaked warships and 3,000 transports; so that it has rightly been recorded that, for so unheard-of an army and so immense a fleet, the rivers scarcely sufficed for drinking, the lands scarcely for marching, the seas scarcely for sailing.

> Latin: 2 igitur Xerxes septingenta milia armatorum de regno et trecenta de auxiliis, rostratas etiam naues mille ducentas, onerarias autem tria milia numero habuisse narratur; ut merito inopinato exercitu inmensaeque classi uix ad potum flumina, uix terras ad ingressum, uix maria ad cursum suffecisse memoratum sit.

[¶2] This column — so incredible in our times, whose number is now harder to establish than it was then to defeat — Leonidas, king of the Spartans, withstood with four thousand men in the narrow pass of Thermopylae.

> Latin: 3 huic tam incredibili temporibus nostris agmini, cuius numerum nunc difficilius est adstrui quam tunc fuit uinci, Leonida rex Spartanorum cum quattuor milibus hominum in angustiis Thermopylarum obstitit.

[¶3] Xerxes, in contempt of the small number set against him, ordered battle to be joined and hands to be engaged. Those whose kinsmen and comrades had fallen on the plains of Marathon were the beginning both of the fighting and of the slaughter.

> Latin: 4 Xerxes autem contemptu paucitatis obiectae iniri pugnam, conseri manum imperat. porro illi, quorum cognati et commanipulares in campis Marathoniis occubuerant, et certaminis simul et cladis exstitere principium.

[¶4] Then a larger and more sluggish crowd took their place, and since it was neither free to charge, nor unencumbered for fighting, nor ready for flight, and was propped up only by its dead, for three days on end it was not a battle of two peoples but the slaughter of one.

> Latin: 5 deinde succedens sibi turba maior ac segnior, cum iam neque ad procurrendum libera neque ad pugnandum expedita neque ad fugiendum prompta solis mortibus subrigeretur, triduo continuo non duorum pugna, sed caedes unius populi fuit.

[¶5] On the fourth day, when Leonidas saw the enemy pouring round on every side, he urged the allied auxiliaries to withdraw from the fight, escape to the summit of the mountain and save themselves for better times; but for himself and his Spartans, he said, another lot must be faced: he owed more to his country than to his life.

> Latin: 6 quarto autem die cum uideret Leonida undique hostem circumfundi hortatur auxiliares socios, ut subtrahentes se pugnae in cacumen montis euadant ac se ad meliora tempora reseruent; sibi uero cum Spartanis suis aliam sortem esse subeundam: plus se patriae debere quam uitae.

[¶6] Having dismissed the allies, he admonished the Spartans that they must hope for much in the way of glory and nothing in the way of life; that they must wait neither for the enemy nor for the day, but must use the cover of night to break into the camp, entangle their arms with the enemy’s, and throw the columns into confusion; that nowhere could victors die more honourably than in the camp of the enemy.

> Latin: 7 dimissis sociis Spartanos admonet, de gloria plurimum, de uita nihil sperandum; neque exspectandum uel hostem uel diem, sed occasione noctis perrumpenda castra, conmiscenda arma, conturbanda agmina fore; nusquam uictores honestius quam in castris hostium esse perituros.

[¶7] Persuaded, therefore, to prefer death, they armed themselves to avenge their coming death, as though they themselves were both exacting and avenging their own destruction. Wonderful to tell, six hundred men burst into the camp of six hundred thousand.

> Latin: 8 persuasi igitur mori malle, in ultionem futurae mortis armantur tam quam ipsi interitum suum et exigerent et uindicarent. mirum dictu sescenti uiri castra sescentorum milium inrumpunt.

*Note: Herodotus has three hundred Spartans who died holding the pass. The night attack on Xerxes’s camp comes from the later tradition found in Diodorus and in Justin, whose figure of six hundred Orosius follows.*

[¶8] An uproar arose through the whole camp; the Persians themselves even helped the Spartans by slaughtering one another; the Spartans, seeking the king and not finding him, cut down and laid low everything, ranged through the entire camp, and among the dense heaps of bodies could barely pursue the few men left: victors without doubt, had they not chosen to die.

> Latin: 9 tumultus totis castris oritur; Persae quoque ipsi Spartanos adiuuant mutuis caedibus suis; Spartani quaerentes regem nec inuenientes caedunt sternuntque omnia, castra peruagantur uniuersa et inter densas strues corporum raros homines uix sequuntur: uictores sine dubio, nisi mori elegissent.

[¶9] The battle was drawn out from the beginning of the night through the greater part of the day. At the last, wearied with conquering, each of them, as soon as with failing limbs he felt he had sated himself with the avenging of his own death, there, amid the encumbrance of corpses and on a field quivering with thick and half-congealed blood, wearily fell and died.

> Latin: 10 proelium a principio noctis in maiorem diei partem tractum: ad postremum uincendo fatigati, ubi quisque eorum deficientibus membris uisus est sibi mortis suae ultione satiatus, ibi inter impedimenta cadauerum campumque crasso et semigelato sanguine palpitantem lassus lapsus et mortuus est.