THE FIRST BOOK OF PAULUS OROSIUS'S HISTORIES AGAINST THE PAGANS. I have obeyed your instructions, most blessed father Augustine; and would that I had done so as effectively as willingly. Yet I am little moved in either direction as to whether I have acted rightly or not. For you have already laboured over this judgment — whether I were able to do what you commanded; but I, content with the testimony of obedience alone, if only I have adorned it with goodwill and effort, am satisfied. For in the great house of a great householder, although there are many animals of diverse kinds useful as an aid to the household estate, yet the care of the dogs is not the least;
to these alone it is implanted by nature to be driven of their own will toward that for which they are prepared, and through a certain inborn formula of obedience to be held in suspense by the mere expectation of a disciplined fear, until by a nod or a sign they are sent forth to the freedom of carrying it out. For they have their own appetites, as much more excellent than the brutes as they approach the rational — that is, to discern, to love, to serve. For discerning between their masters and strangers, they do not hate those whom they pursue, but are zealous for those whom they love; and loving their master and the house, they keep watch not as though fitted by nature of body, but, anxious from the consciousness of a solicitous love, they keep vigil.
Hence also, by a mystical sacrament in the Gospels, the Canaanite woman did not blush to say that the little dogs eat the crumbs under their masters' table, and the Lord did not disdain to hear it. Blessed Tobias too, following the angel as his guide, did not spurn to have a dog as his companion. Therefore, joined to your general love by a special love, I have willingly obeyed your will. For although my submission ought to be ascribed to the precept of your fatherhood, and the whole is yours — namely my work, which goes out from you and returns to you — yet in this one thing alone I have rendered it more abundantly: that I did it willingly.
You had commanded me to oppose the empty-talking depravity of those who, alien to the City of God, are called pagans from the crossroads and country districts of rural places, or 'gentiles' because they savour earthly things; who, since they do not seek the future, but either forget or are ignorant of the past, nevertheless defame the present times, as though most beset with evils beyond the ordinary, for this reason alone: that Christ is believed and God is worshipped, while the idols are less worshipped:
— you had commanded me, then, that out of all the records of histories and annals which can at present be had, I should set forth, in a briefly arranged text of a volume, whatever I might find throughout the ages gone by — things grievous through wars, or corrupted by diseases, or sorrowful through famine, or terrible through earthquakes, or unusual through floods of waters, or to be dreaded through eruptions of fires, or savage through strokes of lightning and ravages of hail, or even wretched through parricides and crimes.
Especially since it was not fitting that your Reverence, while pressing on with an eleventh book against these very pagans — ten of whose rising rays have already, as soon as they were lifted up from the watchtower of the Church's brightness, shone over the whole world — should be detained with a slight little work; and since your holy son, Julian of Carthage, the servant of God, demanded with the same confidence with which he had asked it that his petition in this matter be satisfied: I undertook the task, and was myself first of all weighed down with confusion. To one who reflects on it again and again, the disasters of the present times seemed to have boiled up beyond measure. For I found that days gone by were not only equally as grievous as these, but even the more cruelly wretched the further they were estranged from the remedy of the true religion:
so that this investigation has rightly made clear that death, greedy for blood, reigned while the religion that would forbid bloodshed was unknown; that when this religion began to dawn, death was stupefied; that it is shut in now that this religion already prevails; and that it will be utterly no more when this alone shall reign — excepting, of course, and setting apart those very last days at the end of the age, under the appearing of the Antichrist or even under the conclusion of the judgment, in which the Lord Christ foretold through the holy Scriptures, by His own attestation also, that there would be afflictions such as never were before; for though indeed the manner remains the same as it is now and ever shall be, yet by a more open and graver crisis, through the unbearable tribulations of those times, the proving of the saints
and destruction shall overtake the ungodly. And since almost all the learned men, both among the Greeks and among the Latins, who applied themselves to writing — those who handed down in words the deeds of kings and peoples for lasting remembrance — began their writing from Ninus, son of Belus, king of the Assyrians (for, although in their blind opinion they would have the origin of the world and the creation of mankind believed to be without beginning, they nevertheless fix the beginning of kingdoms and wars from this man, as if forsooth up to that time the human race had lived after the manner of cattle, and only then for the first time had been, as it were, shaken and roused up to a fresh foresight and awoke): I have determined to draw the beginning of human misery from the beginning of man's sin, lightly touching only on a few matters and those briefly.
Now from Adam, the first man, up to Ninus, 'the great' king as they call him, when Abraham was born, there are 3,184 years, which have either been omitted or unknown by all the historians. But from Ninus, that is from Abraham, up to Caesar Augustus, that is up to the nativity of Christ — which was in the forty-second year of Caesar's reign, when, peace having been made with the Parthians, the gates of Janus were shut and wars ceased throughout the whole world — there are reckoned 2,015 years, in which both the doers and the writers of all things spent their leisure and their toil. Therefore the matter itself requires that from these books we touch as briefly as possible upon a few things, books which, speaking of the origin of the world, established the trustworthiness of the past by the announcement of things to come and by the subsequent proof:
not that we may seem to thrust their authority upon anyone, but that it may be worth our while to give a reminder concerning the common opinion which we share with all. First, because, if by divine providence — which, as it is good, so also is just — the world and man are governed, and since man, who by the changeableness of his nature and the freedom of his license is both weak and stubborn, must, just as he needs aid to be piously guided in his need, so also justly be chastened in his immoderate use of liberty, then rightly from the beginning of man, through goods and evils alternating, this world is, as anyone perceives who sees the human race through himself and in himself, kept in exercise; and next, since we are taught that sin and the punishment of sin began from the very first man;
furthermore, since even those writers, beginning from the middle of the ages, though they nowhere make mention of earlier times, have described nothing but wars and disasters — and what else are these wars to be called but evils inclining against one another? and evils of this kind, such as existed then, just as they exist now in so far as they exist, are without doubt either manifest sins or the hidden punishments of sins — what hindrance is there for us to lay open the head of that thing whose body they have set forth, and to testify, even by the slightest account, that those earlier ages, which we show to be far more numerous, endured like miseries?
Being about therefore to speak from the founding of the world up to the founding of the City, and thence up to the principate of Caesar and the nativity of Christ, from which time the dominion of the world has remained under the power of the City, or even up to our own days, in so far as I shall be able to bring it to knowledge, and being about to display from the watchtower the conflicts of the human race and, as it were, the world burning with evils in its various parts, set ablaze by the torch of cupidity, I think it necessary that first I set out the very globe of the lands which the human race inhabits, as it has been divided by our forefathers into three parts and then determined by regions and provinces;
so that more easily, when the local disasters of wars and diseases are displayed, all the studious may attain the knowledge not only of events and times but also of places. Our forefathers established the globe of the whole earth, hemmed in round about by the border of the ocean, to be three-cornered, and called its three parts ASIA, EUROPE, and AFRICA — although some thought that there were two, that is, Asia, and then Africa to be reckoned within Europe. Asia, surrounded on three sides by the ocean, extends across the whole region of the orient on the transverse. Toward the west it touches on its right hand Europe, beginning under the pole of the north; on its left it lets go Africa; but beneath Egypt and Syria it has our sea, which we generally call the Great Sea.
Europe begins, as I said, under the region of the north, from the river Tanais, where the Riphaean mountains, turned away from the Sarmatian ocean, pour forth the river Tanais, which, passing by the altars and boundaries of Alexander the Great situated in the territories of the Rhobasci, swells the Maeotian marshes, whose immense overflow enters the Euxine Sea broadly near the city Theodosia. Thence near Constantinople long straits are sent forth, until this sea which we call Ours receives them. The western ocean is the boundary of Europe in Spain, especially where, near the islands of Gades, the Pillars of Hercules are seen and the tide of the ocean is admitted into the jaws of the Tyrrhenian sea.
The beginning of Africa is from the borders of Egypt and of the city of Alexandria, where the city Paraetonium is situated, upon this Great Sea which flows between all the regions and the middle lands. Thence through places which the inhabitants call Catabathmos, not far from the camp of Alexander the Great and above the lake Chalearzum, then beside the borders of the upper Oasitae, drawn transversely through the Ethiopian deserts, it touches the southern ocean. The boundaries of Africa toward the west are the same as those of Europe, that is, the jaws of the Gaditanian strait. But its furthest boundary is Mount Atlas and the islands which they call the Fortunate. And since I have briefly given the general divisions of the threefold world, I shall take care to indicate, as I promised, the regions of those parts as well.
Asia, at its middle front toward the east, has in the Eastern Ocean the mouths of the river Ganges; on the left a promontory, Caligardamana, beneath which, toward the south-east, lies the island Taprobane, from which the Indian Ocean begins to be named; on the right it has, where Caucasus fails, the promontory Samara of Mount Imavus, beneath which toward the north lie the mouths of the river Ottorogorra, from which the Seric Ocean is named. Within these bounds is INDIA, which has on the west the river Indus, which is received by the Red Sea, on the north Mount Caucasus; the rest, as I said, is bounded by the Eastern and the Indian Ocean. This has 44 peoples, besides the island Taprobane, which has ten cities, and besides the very many other habitable islands. From the river Indus, which is on the east;
up to the river Tigris, which is on the west, these are the regions: ARACHOSIA, PARTHIA, ASSYRIA, PERSIS, and MEDIA, of a mountainous and rugged terrain. These have on the north Mount Caucasus, on the south the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and in their midst the chief rivers Hydaspes and Arbis. In these are 32 peoples. But generally it is called Parthia, although the Holy Scriptures often call the whole of it Media. From the river Tigris up to the river Euphrates is MESOPOTAMIA, beginning on the north between Mount Taurus and Caucasus. To it on the south succeeds Babylonia, then Chaldaea, last of all Arabia Eudaemon (the Blessed), which between the Persian and the Arabian gulf extends toward the east in a narrow tract of land.
In these are 28 peoples. From the river Euphrates, which is on the east, up to Our Sea, which is on the west, then on the north — that is, from the city Dagusa, which is situated on the boundary of Cappadocia and Armenia, not far from the place where the Euphrates rises — up to Egypt and the furthest Arabian gulf, which on the south extends with a long and narrow furrow, very thick with rocks and islands, away from the Red Sea (that is, from the ocean) toward the west: it is generally named SYRIA, having the greatest provinces, Commagene, Phoenicia, and Palestine, besides the Saracens and the Nabataeans, whose peoples are 12.
At the head of Syria is CAPPADOCIA, which has on the east Armenia, on the west Asia, on the north the Themiscyrian plains and the Cimmerian sea, on the south Mount Taurus, beneath which lie Cilicia and Isauria, as far as the Cilician gulf, which faces toward the island Cyprus. ASIA THE REGION, or, to speak properly, Asia Minor, except for the eastern part by which it advances toward Cappadocia and Syria, is surrounded on every side by the sea: on the north by the Pontus Euxinus, on the west by the Propontis and the Hellespont, on the south by Our Sea. There is Mount Olympus. Lower Egypt has on the east Syria Palestine, on the west Libya, on the north Our Sea, on the south the mountain which is called Climax.
and Upper Egypt and the river Nile, which seems to emerge from the shore of the beginning Red Sea, at a place which is called the Mossylon emporium; then flowing long toward the west, making an island by name Meroe in its midst, at last bent toward the north, increased by timely flood-waters, it irrigates the plains of Egypt. Some authors report that this river has its source not far from Atlas and is straightway swallowed in the sands; thence, after a short interval, it overflows in a most vast lake, and from here, as far as the ocean toward the east, it glides through the Ethiopian deserts, and again, bent to the left, descends to Egypt. This indeed is true, that there is such a great river, which has such a rise and such a course, and in very fact produces all the marvels of the Nile;
this river the barbarians, near its source, call Dara, but the other dwellers nearby call it Nuhul; yet here, in the region of the peoples who are called the Libyo-Egyptians, not far from that river which we said bursts forth from the shore of the Red Sea, it is received into an immense lake and swallowed up; unless perhaps by a hidden passage it disgorges into the channel of that one which descends from the east. UPPER EGYPT extends lengthwise toward the east. It has on the north the Arabian gulf, on the south the ocean; for on the west it begins from Lower Egypt, and toward the east it is bounded by the Red Sea. There are 24 peoples. And since we have described the southern part of all Asia, it remains that the part which is left, from the east to the north, be set forth.
MOUNT CAUCASUS first rises up between the Colchians, who are above the Cimmerian sea, and the Albanians, who are by the Caspian sea. Its ridge indeed seems to be one as far as the furthest east, but there are many names; and many wish this very ridge to be believed to be of Mount Taurus, because in very truth the mountain Parcohatras of Armenia, lying midway between Taurus and Caucasus, is thought to join Taurus with Caucasus; but that this is not so is distinguished by the river Euphrates, which, poured forth from the root of Mount Parcohatras, stretching toward the south, shuts out that mountain on the left, Taurus on the right. And so Caucasus itself, between the Colchians and Albanians, where it also has its gates, is called Mount Caucasus;
from the Caspian Gates up to the Armenian Pylae, or up to the source of the river Tigris, between Armenia and Iberia, the mountains are called the Acroceraunia; from the source of the Tigris up to the city Carrae, between the Massagetae and the Parthians, the mountain is Ariobarzanes; from the city Carrae up to the town of Cathippi, between the Hyrcanians and the Bactrians, is Mount Memarmali, where amomum grows; from which the nearest ridge is called Mount Parthau; from the town of Cathippi up to the village Safris, between the Dahae Sacaraucae and the Parthyenae, is Mount Oscobares, where the river Ganges rises and laser grows; from the source of the river Ganges up to the sources of the river Ottorogorra, which are on the north, where the mountain-dwelling Paropanisadae are, is Mount Taurus;
from the sources of the Ottorogorra up to the city Ottorogorra, between the Chuni, the Scythians, and the Gandaridae, is Mount Caucasus. But the last, between the Eoae and the Passyadrae, is Mount Imavus, where the river Chrysorhoas and the promontory Samara are received by the Eastern Ocean. Therefore from Mount Imavus, that is, from the lowest Caucasus and the right-hand part of the east where the Seric Ocean stretches, up to the Boreum promontory and the Boreum river, thence as far as the Scythian sea which is on the north, up to the Caspian sea which is on the west, and up to the extended ridge of Caucasus which is on the south, the peoples of the Hyrcanians and Scythians are 42, wandering widely on account of the barren spreading-out of the lands.
THE CASPIAN SEA arises from the ocean under the region of the North Wind, and both its shores around the ocean are held to be desert and uncultivated places. Thence toward the south it stretches through long narrows, until, spread out over great spaces, it is bounded by the roots of Mount Caucasus. And so from the Caspian sea which is on the east, along the shore of the northern ocean up to the river Tanais and the Maeotian marshes which are on the west, along the shore of the Cimmerian sea which is on the south-west, up to the head and gates of Caucasus which are on the south, the peoples are 34. But generally the nearest region is called Albania, the further, under the sea and Mount Caspius, is named that of the Amazons. The boundaries of Asia have been set forth as briefly as possible.
Now I shall traverse Europe with my pen, in so far as it is granted to the knowledge of man. It begins from the Riphaean mountains and the river Tanais and the Maeotian marshes which are on the east, along the shore of the northern ocean up to Gaul Belgica and the river Rhine which descends on the west, then up to the Danube — which they also call the Hister — which is on the south and, directed toward the east, is received by the Pontus. On the east is Alania, in the middle Dacia where Gothia also is, then Germania, where the Suebi hold the greatest part; of all of whom the peoples are 54. Now I shall set out whatever the Danube shuts off from the barbarian land toward Our Sea.
MOESIA has on the east the mouths of the river Danube, on the south-east Thrace, on the south Macedonia, on the south-west Dalmatia, on the west Histria, on the north-west Pannonia, on the north the Danube. THRACE has on the east the gulf of the Propontis and the city Constantinople, which was previously called Byzantium, on the north a part of Dalmatia and the gulf of the Euxine Sea, on the west and south-west Macedonia, on the south the Aegean Sea. MACEDONIA has on the east the Aegean Sea, on the north Thrace, on the south-east Euboea and the Macedonian gulf, on the south Achaia, on the west-north-west the Acroceraunian mountains in the narrows of the Adriatic gulf, which mountains are opposite Apulia and Brundisium, on the west Dalmatia, on the north-west Dardania, on the north Moesia.
ACHAIA is on almost every side girt by the sea; for it has on the east the Myrtoan Sea, on the south-east the Cretan Sea, on the south the Ionian Sea, on the south-west and west the islands Cephalenia and Cassiope, on the north the Corinthian gulf, on the north-east a narrow ridge of land by which it is joined to Macedonia, or rather to Attica; which place is called the Isthmus, where Corinth is, having in Attica toward the north, not far off, the city Athens. DALMATIA has on the east Macedonia, on the north-east Dardania, on the north Moesia, on the west Histria and the Liburnian gulf and the Liburnian islands, on the south the Adriatic gulf.
PANNONIA, NORICUM, and RAETIA have on the east Moesia, on the south Histria, on the south-west the Pennine Alps, on the west Gaul Belgica, on the north-west the source and limit of the Danube which separates Germania from Gaul between the Danube and Gaul, on the north the Danube and Germania. THE SITUATION OF ITALY stretches from the north-west to the south-east, having on the south-west the Tyrrhenian Sea, on the north the Adriatic gulf; that part of it which is common and contiguous to the mainland is barred by the barriers of the Alps, which, rising up from the Gallic sea above the Ligustic gulf, shut off first the territories of the Narbonenses, then Gaul and Raetia, until they are fixed in the Liburnian gulf.
GAUL BELGICA has on the east the limit of the river Rhine and Germania, on the south-east the Pennine Alps, on the south the province of Narbonensis, on the west the province of Lugdunensis, on the north-west the British Ocean, on the north the island Britain. GAUL LUGDUNENSIS, drawn out in length and bent narrowly, half-encircles the province of Aquitania. It has on the east Belgica, on the south a part of the province of Narbonensis, where the city Arelas is situated and where the river Rhône is received by the Gallic sea.
THE PROVINCE OF NARBONENSIS, a part of the Gauls, has on the east the Cottian Alps, on the west Spain, on the north-west Aquitania, on the north Lugdunensis, on the north-east Gaul Belgica, on the south the Gallic sea which is between Sardinia and the Balearic islands, having in front, where the river Rhône goes out into the sea, the Stoechades islands. THE PROVINCE OF AQUITANIA, by the oblique course of the river Loire, which for the most part is its boundary, is drawn round in a circle. It has on the north-west the ocean which is called the Aquitanian gulf, on the west the Spains, on the north and east Lugdunensis, on the south-east and south it touches the province of Narbonensis.
ALL SPAIN, by the situation of its lands, is three-cornered, and by the surrounding of the ocean and of the Tyrrhenian sea is made almost an island. Its first angle, looking toward the east, hemmed in on the right by the province of Aquitania, on the left by the Balearic sea, is inserted into the territories of the Narbonenses. The second angle points toward the north-west; where Brigantia, a city of Gallaecia, is situated and raises up a very lofty lighthouse, among the few works worth recording, toward the watch-point of Britain. Its third angle is that where the islands of Gades, directed toward the south-west, look out upon Mount Atlas with a gulf of the ocean lying between.
Hither Spain (Hispania Citerior), beginning on the east, the Pyrenean forest-range leads down from the part of the north up to the Cantabri and Astures, and thence through the Vaccaei and the Oretani, whom it has on the west, Carthage, set on the shore of Our Sea, marks its bound. Further Spain (Hispania Ulterior) has on the east the Vaccaei, the Celtiberi, and the Oretani, on the north the ocean, on the west the ocean, on the south the Gaditanian strait of the ocean; whence Our Sea, which is called the Tyrrhenian, is admitted. And since the ocean has islands which they call Britain and Hibernia, which are situated on the far side of the Gauls toward the prospect of Spain, they shall be briefly set forth. BRITAIN, an island of the ocean, extends lengthwise toward the north; on the south it has the Gauls.
Its nearest shore a city opens to those crossing over, which is called Rutupiae harbour; whence, not far off, it looks out toward the Menapi and Batavi set in the south among the Morini. This island has in length 800 miles, in breadth 200 miles. But at its back, where it lies open to the boundless ocean, it has the Orkney islands, of which 20 are deserted, 13 are inhabited. Then the island Thule, which, separated by an infinite space from the rest, set toward the north-west in the middle of the ocean, is scarcely known to a few. The island HIBERNIA, situated between Britain and Spain, stretches out with a longer space from the south-west toward the north.
Its forward parts, directed toward the Cantabrian ocean, look from afar across a spacious interval upon Brigantia, a city of Gallaecia, meeting them from the south-west toward the north-west, especially from that promontory where the mouth of the river Scena is, and where the Velabri and Luceni dwell. This island, nearer to Britain, narrower in extent of land, but more advantageous by the temperateness of its sky and soil, is inhabited by the peoples of the Scotti. To this also the island Mevania is very near, itself too not small in extent, convenient in soil; it is likewise inhabited by the peoples of the Scotti. These are the boundaries of all Europe. As for AFRICA, as I said, since our forefathers described it as to be reckoned the third part of the world, they followed not the measures of spaces but the principles of divisions.
For this Great Sea, since it arises on the west from the ocean and inclines more toward the south, made the boundary of Africa, narrowed between itself and the ocean. Whence also some, although understanding it to be equal in length yet much narrower, thought it shameless to call it a third part, but rather, reckoning Africa within Europe, preferred to call it a portion of the second part. Moreover, since much more of the land in Africa is uncultivated and unknown through the heat of the sun than in Europe through the rigour of the cold — for indeed almost all living and germinating things approach more patiently and tolerably to the extreme of cold than to the extreme of heat — this is precisely the reason that Africa is seen to be in all respects lesser in extent and in peoples:
because both by its nature it has less space, and by the inclemency of the sky it has more desert. Its description by provinces and peoples is this: LIBYA CYRENAICA AND PENTAPOLIS is the first part of Africa after Egypt. It begins from the city Paraetonium and the mountains of Catabathmos, thence by the second sea it extends up to the Altars of the Philaeni. Behind it, up to the southern ocean, it has the peoples of the Libyo-Ethiopians and the Garamantes. To this on the east is Egypt, on the north the Libyan sea, on the west the Greater Syrtes and the Troglodytae — opposite whom is the island of Calypso — on the south the Ethiopian ocean.
THE PROVINCE OF TRIPOLITANA, which is also called Subventana or the region of the Arzuges, where Leptis Magna is the city — although the Arzuges are generally named along the whole length of the African frontier — has on the east the Altars of the Philaeni between the Greater Syrtes and the Troglodytae, on the north the Sicilian or rather the Adriatic sea and the Lesser Syrtes, on the west Byzacium up to the Lake of the Salinae, on the south the barbarian Gaetuli, Nathabres, and Garamantes, reaching up to the Ethiopian ocean. BYZACIUM, ZEUGIS, AND NUMIDIA. We find that Zeugis was formerly the general name not of one district, but of the whole province.
Byzacium therefore, where the city Hadrumetum is, Zeugis, where great Carthage is, Numidia, where the cities Hippo Regius and Rusiccada are — these have on the east the Lesser Syrtes and the Lake of the Salinae, on the north Our Sea which faces toward the islands Sicily and Sardinia, on the west Mauretania Sitifensis, on the south the mountains of the Uzarae and beyond them the Ethiopian peoples wandering up to the Ethiopian ocean. MAURETANIA SITIFENSIS AND CAESARIENSIS have on the east Numidia, on the north Our Sea, on the west the river Malva, on the south Mount Astrix, which divides between the living land and the lying sands as far as the ocean; in which the Gangine Ethiopians wander. MAURETANIA TINGITANA is the furthest part of Africa.