Church History 8.14.3 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Maxentius terrorized Rome and once had his guards massacre great numbers of Roman citizens in the city.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:372–373

οἱ πάντες δʼ αὐτὸν ὑποπεπτηχότες δῆμοι καὶ ἄρχοντες, ἔνδοξοί τε καὶ ἄδοξοι, δεινῇ κατετρύχοντο τυραννίδι. καὶ οὐδʼ ἠρεμούντων καὶ τὴν πικρὰν φερόντων δουλείαν, ἀπαλλαγή τις ὅμως ἦν τῆς τοῦ τυράννου φονώσης ὠμότητος· ἐπὶ σμικρᾷ γοῦν ἤδη ποτὲ προφάσει τὸν δῆμον εἰς φόνον τοῖς ἀμφʼ αὐτὸν δορυφόροις ἐκδίδωσι, καὶ ἐκτείνετο μυρία τοῦ δήμου Ῥωμαίων πλήθη ἐπὶ μέσης τῆς πόλεως, οὐ Σκυθῶν οὐδὲ βαρβάρων, ἀλλʼ αὐτῶν τῶν οἰκείων δόρασι καὶ πανοπλίαις.

English · Claude translation

All the people and magistrates, noble and common, cowered before him and were worn down by the terrible tyranny. Even when they kept quiet and bore the bitter slavery, there was still no release from the tyrant's murderous cruelty: once, on a trivial pretext, he gave the people over to slaughter by his bodyguards, and countless numbers of the Roman people were killed in the middle of the city, not by the spears and arms of Scythians or barbarians but by those of their own countrymen.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:372–373 · 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)

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.14.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/14/3/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.14.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/14/3/).