Church History 8.11.1 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: In Phrygia soldiers burned a whole Christian town with its people because all of them, officials included, refused to worship idols.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:364–365

Ἤδη γοῦν ὅλην Χριστιανῶν πολίχνην αὔτανδρον ἀμφὶ τὴν Φρυγίαν ἐν κύκλῳ περιβαλόντες ὁπλῖται, πῦρ τε ὑφάψαντες, κατέφλεξαν αὐτοὺς ἅμα νηπίοις καὶ γυναιξὶ, τὸν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸν ἐπιβοωμένους· ὅτι δὴ πανδημεὶ πάντες οἱ τὴν πόλιν οἰκοῦντες, λογιστής τε αὐτὸς καὶ στρατηγὸς σὺν τοῖς ἐν τέλει πᾶσι καὶ ὅλῳ δήμῳ, Χριστιανοὺς σφᾶς ὁμολογοῦντες, οὐδʼ ὁπωστιοῦν τοῖς προστάττουσιν εἰδωλολατρεῖν ἐπειθάρχουν.

English · Claude translation

For instance, soldiers surrounded a whole small town of Christians in Phrygia, with its inhabitants, set fire to it, and burned them up together with young children and women as they called upon the God over all; because all the inhabitants of the city in a body, the curator himself and the chief magistrate with all the officials and the whole people, confessed themselves Christians and would in no way obey those who ordered them to worship idols.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:364–365 · 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

Martyrdom, Persecution

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.11.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/11/1/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.11.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/11/1/).