---
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: 70 of 177
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/70/
cite: "Paulus Orosius, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Seven Books of History against the Pagans, section 70. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/70/"
---

# 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.

## 70. Book 4 · Chapter 5

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/70/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orosius-historiae/70/#p-N

[¶0] In the year 480 from the founding of the City, among many portents, blood was seen to flow from the earth and from the sky. For in very many places gore welled up and flowed from springs, and from the clouds, as milk came down drop by drop in the likeness of rain, showers — dreadful, as it seemed to them — watered the earth.

> Latin: 1 Anno ab urbe condita CCCCLXXX inter multa prodigia sanguis e terra, ac uisum est manare de caelo. nam et plurimis locis scaturiens e fontibus cruor fluxit et de nubibus guttatim in speciem pluuiae lacte demisso, diri, ut ipsis uisum est, terram imbres inrigauerunt.

[¶1] At that time the Carthaginians, who had given help to the Tarentines against the Romans, when they were charged with it by the senate through envoys, heaped a brazen perjury upon the most shameful stain of a broken treaty.

> Latin: 2 eo tempore Carthaginienses dato aduersum Romanos auxilio Tarentinis, cum a senatu per legatos arguerentur, turpissimam rupti foederis labem praesumpto accumulauere peiurio.

[¶2] At that time too the Volsinians, the most flourishing of the Etruscans, nearly perished through luxury. For when, their licence having been prolonged into custom, they were freeing their slaves indiscriminately, inviting them to their banquets, and honouring them with marriages,

> Latin: 3 Tunc etiam Vulsinienses, Etruscorum florentissimi, luxurie paene perierunt. nam cum, licentia in consuetudinem prorogata, seruos suos passim liberos facerent, conuiuiis allegarent, coniugiis honestarent:

[¶3] the freedmen, admitted to a share of power, planned to usurp the whole of it by crime; freed from the yoke of slavery, they burned with ambition for domination; and those whom as subjects they had loved contentedly as their masters, they now, as free men, cursed, because they remembered that these had been their masters.

> Latin: 4 libertini in partem potestatis recepti plenitudinem per scelus usurpare meditati sunt et liberati seruitutis iugo, ambitu dominationis arserunt et quos dominos subditi aequanimiter dilexerunt, eos iam liberi, quod dominos fuisse meminerant, exsecrati sunt.

[¶4] And so the freedmen, conspiring in crime — and so large was their band that they gained what they dared without a struggle — seized the city and claimed it for their own class alone; by crime they usurped the patrimonies and the wives of their masters, and drove their masters far off into exile. These, wretched, exiled and destitute, betook themselves to Rome, where, having displayed their misery and lamented their grievance, they were both avenged and restored through the severity of the Romans.

> Latin: 5 itaque conspirantes in facinus libertini - quorum tanta manus fuit, ut sine controuersia auso potirentur - correptam urbem suo tantum generi uindicant, patrimonia coniugiaque dominorum sibi per scelus usurpant, extorres dominos procul abigunt, qui miseri, exules egentesque Romam deferuntur: ubi ostentata miseria querellaque defleta, per Romanorum seueritatem et uindicati sunt et restituti.

[¶5] In the year 481 from the founding of the City, a huge pestilence blazed up at Rome. Its dreadfulness I am content to indicate, since I cannot render it in full with words.

> Latin: 6 Anno ab urbe condita CCCCLXXXI pestilentia ingens apud Romam conflagrauit, cuius atrocitatem significare contentus sum, quia uerbis inplere non possum.

[¶6] For if one asks the length of time that it lasted, it stretched on, laying waste, beyond two years; if the depopulation that it wrought, a census was proclaimed which inquired, not how many people had perished, but how many had survived; if the violence with which it struck, the Sibylline books are witnesses, which answered that it had been imposed by the wrath of heaven.

> Latin: 7 si enim spatium temporis quo mansit inquiritur, ultra biennium uastando porrecta est; si depopulatio quam egerit, census indictus est, qui non quantum hominum deperisset, sed quantum superfuisset, inquireret; si uiolentia qua adfecerit, Sibyllini libri testes sunt, qui eam caelesti ira inpositam responderunt.

[¶7] But lest anyone take offence, as though at the temptation of a quibble, because, whereas the Sibyl said that the gods were angry, we may seem to have spoken of the wrath of heaven, let him hear and understand that these things, even though they are mostly brought about through the powers of the air, nevertheless do not happen at all without the judgement of almighty God.

> Latin: 8 sed, ne quemquam quasi temptatio cauillationis offendat, quod, cum Sibylla iratos deos dixerit, nos iram caelestem dixisse uideamur, audiat et intellegat, quia haec, etsi plerumque per aerias potestates fiunt, tamen sine arbitrio omnipotentis Dei omnino non fiunt.

[¶8] At the same time Caparronia, a Vestal virgin, accused of unchastity, perished by hanging; her seducer and the slaves who were privy to it were put to death.

> Latin: 9 Eodem tempore Caparronia uirgo Vestalis incesti rea suspendio periit: corruptor eius consciique serui supplicio adfecti sunt.

[¶9] Behold what things, and how great, we recount as having befallen one after another, very many in each single year — among which years there was surely seldom, or almost never, one in which nothing grievous took place; and this although those same writers, having set themselves rather the task of praise, were wary of enumerating miseries,

> Latin: 10 Ecce continuatim quae et quanta numeramus accidisse annis singulis plurima, inter quos certe raro aut paene nullo nihil triste gestum, et hoc, cum idem scriptores proposito sibi magis laudandi negotio cauerent numerositates miseriarum,

[¶10] lest they should offend the very people for whom and about whom these things were being written, and seem to frighten their hearers with examples of the past rather than to instruct them.

> Latin: 11 ne eosdem quibus haec et de quibus scribebantur offenderent auditoresque suos exemplis praeteritorum terrere potius quam instituere uiderentur.

[¶11] Moreover, we who are placed at the end of the times cannot know the evils of the Romans except through those who praised the Romans.

> Latin: 12 porro autem nos in ultimo temporum positi mala Romanorum scire non possumus nisi per eos, qui laudauere Romanos.

[¶12] From this we are given to understand how great those things must have been which were deliberately suppressed because of their horror, when such great things are found as were able to trickle out faintly amid the praises.

> Latin: 13 ex quo intellegi datur, quanta illa fuerint quae studio propter horrorem repressa sunt, cum tanta inueniuntur quae tenuiter inter laudes emanare potuerunt.