---
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: 32 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/32/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 32. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/32/"
---

# 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.

## 32. Book 2 · Chapter 11

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/32/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/32/#p-N

[¶0] Mardonius, however, to whom Xerxes had entrusted what remained of the war, was first puffed up by a brief success and soon cast down into the depths. For he stormed Olynthus, a town of Greece.

> Latin: 1 At uero Mardonius, cui reliqua belli Xerxes commiserat, adflatus primum successu breui mox in extrema deiectus est. Olynthum siquidem Graeciae oppidum expugnauit.

*Note: Herodotus (8.127) credits the capture of Olynthus to Artabazus, not Mardonius.*

[¶1] Having set about drawing the Athenians into hope of peace by various solicitations, when he saw that their liberty could not be overcome, he burned part of the city and led his whole apparatus of war down into Boeotia.

> Latin: 2 Athenienses uaria sollicitatione adducere in spem pacis adgressus, ubi inexpugnabilem eorum libertatem uidet, incensa urbis parte in Boeotiam omnem belli apparatum deducit.

[¶2] There too a hundred thousand Greeks followed him, and, joining battle without delay, they destroyed his forces and compelled Mardonius to flee with a few men, stripped bare as though from a shipwreck; they took his camp, crammed with royal wealth — to the no small loss, indeed, of their ancient diligence: for after the division of this booty Persian gold was the first corruption of Greek virtue.

> Latin: 3 illuc quoque eum centum milia Graecorum insecuta sunt et commisso sine mora proelio Mardonium deletis copiis ipsius uelut e naufragio nudum cum paucis fugere conpulerunt; castra regiis opibus referta ceperunt, non paruo quidem antiquae industriae damno: nam post huius praedae diuisionem aurum Persicum prima Graeciae uirtutis corruptio fuit.

[¶3] Utter ruin, once begun, pressed hard upon the wretched. For as it happened, on the same day on which the forces of Mardonius were destroyed in Boeotia, part of the Persian army was fighting a naval battle in Asia beneath Mount Mycale.

> Latin: 4 urguet igitur inceptus miseros extrema perditio. nam forte eodem die, quo in Boeotia Mardonii copiae deletae sunt, pars Persici exercitus in Asia sub monte Mycale nauali proelio dimicabat.

[¶4] There a new rumour suddenly filled the ears of both fleets and peoples: that the forces of Mardonius had been wiped out and the Greeks had emerged victorious. Wonderful ordering of the divine judgement — that a battle joined in Boeotia at sunrise should be announced in Asia at midday on the same day, across such great stretches of sea and land lying between!

> Latin: 5 ibi nouus repente rumor utriusque classis et populi inpleuit aures, Mardonii exstinctas copias, Graecos exstitisse uictores. mira diuini iudicii ordinatio, in Boeotia oriente sole bellum fuisse commissum, in Asia meridianis horis sub eadem die tantis spatiis maris terraeque interiacentibus nuntiatum!

[¶5] This rumour contributed above all to the outcome, in that it rendered the Persians, seized at the news of their allies’ disaster first by grief and then by despair, neither ready for battle nor fit for flight. And so the enemy, made steadier by the success of his good fortune, fell upon them in their dismay and routed them.

> Latin: 6 qui rumor ei uel maxime rei adstipulatus est, quod Persas, audita clade sociorum primum dolore dehinc desperatione correptos, nec bello expeditos nec fugae habiles reddidit. atque ita consternatos profligatosque constantior factus hostis successu felicitatis inuasit.

[¶6] Xerxes, having become contemptible to his own people through the war unsuccessfully waged in Greece, was trapped in his palace and killed by his prefect Artabanus.

> Latin: 7 Xerxes, bello in Graecia infeliciter gesto contemptibilis suis factus, per Artabanum praefectum suum in regia circumuentus occiditur.

[¶7] O times most worthy of longing and remembrance! O those days of unbroken serenity, which are held up to us to be looked back on as if out of darkness! In which, within the briefest space, three wars carried off from the bowels of one kingdom 1,900,000 men under three successive kings — to say nothing of most unhappy Greece at that time, which surpassed in its dead the whole of this number at which we now grow numb.

> Latin: 8 O tempora desiderio et recordatione dignissima! o dies illos inoffensae serenitatis, qui nobis ueluti e tenebris respiciendi proponuntur! quibus breuissimo interuallo de uisceribus unius regni decies nouies centena milia uirorum tribus proximis regibus tria bella rapuerunt; ut taceam de infelicissima tunc Graecia, quae totum hunc, de quo nunc hebescimus, numerum moriendo superauit.

[¶8] That most famous Leonidas of the Lacedaemonians, in this war against Xerxes which was the last both for himself and for the enemy, when he had spoken to his six hundred those most celebrated words of encouragement — “Breakfast as men who are to dine in the underworld” — nevertheless mercifully urged the auxiliaries, whom he was ordering to leave the war, to save themselves for better times.

> Latin: 9 Leonida ille clarissimus Lacedaemoniorum in bello isto aduersus Xerxen, quod supremum ipsi atque hostibus fuit, cum sescentis suis famosissima illa incitamenta dixisset: "Prandete tamquam apud inferos cenaturi", auxiliaribus tamen, quos excedere bello iubebat, misericorditer suasit, ut se ad meliora tempora reseruarent.

[¶9] See: when he promised that better times were to come, while these men maintain that the past was better, what else can be concluded, since each in his own day detests the present, except that times are either always good but unwelcome, or never better at all?

> Latin: 10 ecce cum ille promisit futura meliora, isti adserunt meliora praeterita, quid aliud colligi datur utroque in suis detestante praesentia, nisi aut semper bona esse sed ingrata aut numquam omnino meliora?