---
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: 7 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/7/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 7. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/7/"
---

# 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.

## 7. Book 1 · Chapter 4

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/7/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/7/#p-N

[¶0] In the year 1300 before the founding of the City, Ninus, king of the Assyrians — ‘the first’, as they themselves would have it — carried arms abroad out of lust for spreading his dominion, and for fifty years led a bloody life of wars throughout all Asia.

> Latin: 1 Ante annos urbis conditae MCCC Ninus rex Assyriorum 'primus' ut ipsi uolunt propagandae dominationis libidine arma foras extulit cruentamque uitam quinquaginta annis per totam Asiam bellis egit;

[¶1] Rising from the south and the Red Sea, he laid waste and subdued the Euxine Sea under the farthest north, and taught the barbarism of Scythia, until then unwarlike and innocent, to rouse its sleeping savagery, to know its own strength, to drink no longer the milk of cattle but the blood of men, and at last to conquer while being conquered.

> Latin: 2 a meridie atque a Rubro mari surgens, sub ultimo septentrione Euxinum pontum uastando perdomuit, Scythicamque barbariem, adhuc tunc inbellem et innocentem, torpentem excitare saeuitiam, uires suas nosse, et non lacte iam pecudum sed sanguinem hominum bibere, ad postremum uincere dum uincitur edocuit.

[¶2] Finally he overcame in battle and killed Zoroaster, king of the Bactrians and, as they say, the inventor of the art of magic. Afterwards he himself, while attacking a city that had revolted from him, was struck by an arrow and died.

> Latin: 3 nouissime Zoroastrem Bactrianorum regem eundemque magicae ut ferunt artis repertorem pugna oppressum interfecit. post ipse, dum deficientem a se oppugnat urbem, sagitta ictus interiit.

*Note: The story of Ninus’s war with Zoroaster, “king of the Bactrians”, comes from Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus (1.1); it has no historical basis.*

[¶3] On his death his wife Semiramis succeeded him, a man in spirit, dressed in the guise of her son; and for forty-two years she kept the peoples, already greedy for blood through habit, busy in the slaughter of nations.

> Latin: 4 huic mortuo Samiramis uxor successit, uirum animo, habitu filium gerens, auidosque iam usu sanguinis populos per duos et quadraginta annos caedibus gentium exercuit.

[¶4] Not content, woman as she was, with the boundaries which she had received from her husband — then the only warrior in the world — won over fifty years, she added to the empire Ethiopia, crushed in war and smeared with blood. She also made war on the Indians, whose land no one but she and Alexander the Great ever entered.

> Latin: 5 non contenta terminis mulier, quos a uiro suo tunc solo bellatore in quinquaginta annis adquisitos susceperat, Aethiopiam bello pressam, sanguine interlitam, imperio adiecit. Indis quoque bellum intulit, quo praeter illam et Alexandrum Magnum nullus intrauit.

[¶5] To hunt down and slaughter peoples living in peace was in that age all the more cruel and grievous than it is now, because among them then there were neither the fires of war abroad nor such great exercise of greed at home.

> Latin: 6 quod eo tempore ideo crudelius grauiusque erat quam nunc est, persequi et trucidare populos in pace uiuentes, quia tunc apud illos nec foris erant ulla incendia bellorum, nec domi tanta exercitia cupiditatum.

[¶6] This woman, burning with lust and thirsting for blood, amid unceasing debauchery and murders — for she would kill all whom she had summoned in royal fashion and kept in harlot’s fashion, once she had enjoyed them in her bed — at last conceived a son shamefully, exposed him impiously, knew him incestuously, and covered her private disgrace with a public crime.

> Latin: 7 haec, libidine ardens, sanguinem sitiens, inter incessabilia et stupra et homicidia, cum omnes quos regie arcessitos, meretricie habitos concubitu oblectasset occideret, tandem filio flagitiose concepto, impie exposito, inceste cognito priuatam ignominiam publico scelere obtexit.

[¶7] For she decreed that between parents and children no reverence for nature should be observed in seeking marriages, but that each should be free to do as he pleased.

> Latin: 8 praecepit enim, ut inter parentes ac filios nulla delata reuerentia naturae de coniugiis adpetendis ut cuique libitum esset liberum fieret.

*Note: Dante drew this charge from Orosius: Semiramis “made lust licit in her law” (Inferno 5.56).*