Church History 10.8.13 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Licinius exiled the innocent, gave nobles' wives to slaves to be abused, and himself violated women, but his last crimes were worse still.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:485

οἵους δʼ ἐφηῦρεν ἐπὶ τούτοις ὁ μισάνθρωπος κατὰ μηδὲν ἠδικηκότων ἐξορισμοὺς, οἵας εὐπατριδῶν καὶ ἀξιολόγων ἀνδρῶν ἀπαγωγὰς, ὧν δὴ τὰς κουριδίας ἀποζευγνὺς γαμετὰς μιαροῖς τισὶν οἰκέταις ἐφʼ ὕβρει πράξεως αἰσχρᾶς παρεδίδου, ὅσαις δὲ αὐτὸς ὁ ἐσχατόγηρως γυναιξὶν ὑπάνδροις, παρθένοις τε κόραις ἐμπαροινῶν, τὴν ἀκόλαστον τῆς αὐτοῦ ψυχῆς ἐπιθυμίαν ἐπλήρου — τί χρὴ ταῦτα μηκύνειν, τῆς τῶν ἐσχάτων αὐτοῦ πράξεων ὑπερβολῆς μικρὰ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ τὸ μηδὲν εἶναι διελεγχούσης;

English · Claude translation

And what banishments did the man-hater devise besides these against those who had done no wrong, what arrests of well-born and notable men, whose wedded wives he separated from them and handed over to certain vile slaves for shameful outrage; and to how many married women and young virgins did he himself, in extreme old age, do violence, satisfying the licentious desire of his soul! Why should one dwell on these things, when the excess of his last deeds shows the first to be small and nothing?

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:485 · Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Eusebii Caesariensis Opera, vol. 4: Historiae ecclesiasticae libri I–X (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871) · Greek text: W. Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Dindorf, Eusebii Opera 4. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Teubner, 1871); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 1 (1890) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Topics

Ethics

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/8/13/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/8/13/).