Church History 10.8.2 · Sophia Scriptura

Greek text · Dindorf 4:482

οὐκ ἦν δὲ ἄρα τῷ μισοκάλῳ φθόνῳ, τῷ τε φιλοπονήρῳ δαίμονι φορητὸς ἡ τῶν ὁρωμένων θέα, ὥσπερ οὖν οὐδὲ Λικιννίῳ πρὸς σώφρονα λογισμὸν ἐτύγχανεν αὐτάρκη τὰ τοῖς πρόσθεν δεδηλωμένοις τυράννοις συμβεβηκότα· ὃς εὖ φερομένης τῆς ἀρχῆς αὐτῷ, βασιλέως τε μεγάλου Κωνσταντίνου δευτερείων τιμῆς, ἐπιγαμβρίας τε καὶ συγγενείας τῆς ἀνωτάτω ἠξιωμένος, μιμήσεως μὲν τῆς τῶν καλῶν ἀπελιμπάνετο, τῆς δὲ τῶν ἀσεβῶν τυράννων μοχθηρίας ἐζήλου τὴν κακοτροπίαν, καὶ ὧν τοῦ βίου τὴν καταστροφὴν ἐπεῖδεν αὐτοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς, τούτων ἕπεσθαι τῇ γνώμη μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ τοῦ κρείττονος ἐμμένειν φιλίᾳ τε καὶ διαθέσει ᾑρεῖτο.

English · Claude translation

But the sight of these things was not bearable to envy, the hater of good, and to the evil-loving demon; just as what had happened to the tyrants already described was not enough to bring Licinius to a sound mind. Though his rule prospered, and he had been honored with the second rank after the great emperor Constantine and with marriage into his family and the highest kinship, he fell short in imitating what was good and emulated the wickedness of the impious tyrants, and chose to follow the mind of those whose end he had seen with his own eyes rather than to remain in the friendship and goodwill of his superior.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:482 · 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

Persecution

Notes

Translation notes

Licinius married Constantine's half-sister Constantia in 313.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text; wrong breathing and accent in the digital text): οὐκ ἢν δὲ → οὐκ ἦν δὲ; ὥσπερ οὑν → ὥσπερ οὖν.

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/8/2/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/8/2/).