---
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: 62 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/62/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 62. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/62/"
---

# 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.

## 62. Book 3 · Chapter 22

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/62/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/62/#p-N

[¶0] There follows the year in which, when the war had been renewed by the Samnites, the Romans were defeated and fled into their camp.

> Latin: 1 Sequitur annus, quo Romani instaurato a Samnitibus bello uicti sunt atque in castra fugerunt.

[¶1] Afterwards, however, the Samnites, assuming a new dress and spirit — that is, with silvered arms and garments, and minds prepared to die if they did not win — offered themselves to battle.

> Latin: 2 postea uero Samnites nouum habitum animumque sumentes, hoc est deargentatis armis ac uestibus, paratoque animo ni uincant mori, bello sese offerunt.

[¶2] The consul Papirius was sent against them with an army, and when he was forbidden to engage by the augurs of the sacred chickens, who made empty conjectures, he laughed at them and finished the war as successfully as he had resolutely taken it up.

> Latin: 3 aduersum quos Papirius consul cum exercitu missus cum a pullariis auguribus uana coniectantibus congredi prohiberetur, inridens eos tam feliciter confecit bellum quam constanter arripuit.

[¶3] For in this battle twelve thousand of the enemy are reported to have been slain and three thousand captured. But this victory too, truly praiseworthy, which empty auspices could not hinder, was spoiled by diseases that suddenly arose.

> Latin: 4 nam in hoc proelio XII milia hostium caesa, III milia capta referuntur. sed hanc quoque istius uere laudandam uictoriam, quam uani auspices impedire non potuerunt, oborti subito corrupere morbi.

[¶4] For so great and so intolerable a pestilence then seized the city that, to allay it by any means whatever, they thought the Sibylline books should be consulted, and brought over that horrid Epidaurian serpent together with the very stone of Aesculapius: as if indeed pestilence had not been allayed before, or had not arisen again afterwards.

> Latin: 5 nam tanta ac tam intolerabilis pestilentia tunc corripuit ciuitatem, ut propter eam quacumque ratione sedandam libros Sibyllinos consulendos putarint horrendumque illum Epidaurium colubrum cum ipso Aesculapi lapide aduexerint: quasi uero pestilentia aut ante sedata non sit aut post orta non fuerit.

[¶5] Moreover, in the second year after this the consul Fabius Gurges fought badly against the Samnites. For he lost his army and, defeated, fled back into the City.

> Latin: 6 Praeterea altero abhinc anno Fabius Gurges consul male aduersum Samnitas pugnauit. namque amisso exercitu uictus in urbem refugit.

[¶6] So when the senate was deliberating on removing him, his father Fabius Maximus, pleading against his son’s disgrace, voluntarily offered to go as a legate to his son, if his son were granted the opportunity of wiping out the disgrace and waging war again.

> Latin: 7 itaque cum senatus de summouendo eo deliberaret, pater eius Fabius Maximus ignominiam filii deprecatus legatum se filio iturum ultro obtulit, si illi depellendae ignominiae et gerendi iterum belli facultas daretur.

[¶7] This was granted; and when battle was joined and he saw his son the consul, while fighting, suddenly hemmed in by the pressure of Pontius, general of the Samnites, and by the hostile weapons of the enemy, the dutiful old man rode on horseback into the midst of the column.

> Latin: 8 qua impetrata proelioque conserto cum subito pugnantem filium consulem insistente Pontio Samnitarum duce et infestis hostium telis conclusum uideret, in medium se agmen pius senex equo uectus ingessit.

[¶8] Moved by this deed, the Romans pressed in there with their whole line, until, having destroyed the enemy army, they captured the general Pontius himself, defeated and overwhelmed.

> Latin: 9 quo facto commoti Romani tota ibi incubuere acie, donec ipsum Pontium ducem deleto hostili exercitu uictum oppressumque ceperunt.

[¶9] In that battle twenty thousand Samnites were slain, and four thousand captured together with their king; and at last the Samnite war, which had dragged on for forty-nine years with great loss to the Romans, was ended by the loss of their captured general.

> Latin: 10 caesa sunt in eo proelio Samnitium XX milia, capta autem IIII milia cum rege suo; tandemque Samniticum bellum, quod per quadraginta et nouem annos multa Romanorum clade trahebatur, capti ducis destitutione finitum est.

[¶10] In the following year war was waged with the Sabines under the consul Curius, and how many thousands of men were killed in it and how many captured the consul himself made plain: for when he wished to report in the senate the extent of the Sabine land acquired and the multitude of the people captured, he could not set out the number.

> Latin: 11 Anno subsequente cum Sabinis Curio consule bellum gestum est, ubi quot milia hominum interfecta, quot capta sint, ipse consul ostendit. qui cum in senatu magnitudinem adquisiti agri Sabini et multitudinem capti populi referre uellet, numerum explicare non potuit.

[¶11] In the year 463 from the founding of the City, in the consulship of Dolabella and Domitius, when the Lucanians, the Bruttii, and also the Samnites, having made an alliance with the Etruscans and the Senonian Gauls, were stirring up a revived war against the Romans, the Romans sent envoys to win over the Gauls by entreaty.

> Latin: 12 Anno ab urbe condita CCCCLXIII Dolabella et Domitio consulibus Lucani Bruttii, Samnites quoque cum Etruscis et Senonibus Gallis facta societate, cum rediuiuum contra Romanos bellum molirentur, Romani ad exorandos Gallos misere legatos.

[¶12] When the Gauls had killed them, the praetor Caecilius, sent with an army to avenge the murder of the envoys and to crush the uprising of the enemy, was overwhelmed by the Etruscans and Gauls and perished.

> Latin: 13 quos cum Galli interfecissent, Caecilius praetor ob ulciscendam legatorum necem et conprimendum tumultum hostium cum exercitu missus, ab Etruscis Gallisque oppressus interiit.

[¶13] Besides, seven military tribunes were killed in that battle, many nobles were butchered, and thirteen thousand Roman soldiers too were laid low in that war.

> Latin: 14 septem praeterea tribuni militum in ea pugna occisi, multi nobiles trucidati, tredecim milia etiam militum Romanorum illo bello prostrata sunt.

[¶14] And whenever the Gauls flared up, Rome was so worn down in all her resources that under the present assaults of the Goths she ought rather to remember the Gauls.

> Latin: 15 Ita autem quotienscumque Galli exarserunt, totis opibus suis Roma detrita est, ut sub praesenti nunc concursatione Gotthorum magis debeat meminisse Gallorum.