Sophia Scriptura

Church History 8.17.7

Eusebius of Caesarea · Church History · ca. 300–325 · Caesarea · Read in context

Summary: The Christians, the edict says, had willfully abandoned ancestral institutions and made their own laws and assemblies.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:380

ἐπεί- “περ τινὶ λογισμῷ τοσαύτη αὐτοὺς πλεονεξία κατε- “σχήκει καὶ ἄνοια κατειλήφει ὡς μὴ ἕπεσθαι τοῖς “ὑπὸ τῶν πάλαι καταδειχθεῖσιν, ἅπερ ἴσως πρότερον “καὶ οἶ γονεῖς αὐτῶν ἦσαν καταστήσαντες, ἀλλὰ “κατὰ τὴν αὐτῶν πρόθεσιν καὶ ὡς ἕκαστος ἐβού- “λετο, οὕτως ἑαυτοῖς καὶ νόμους ποιῆσαι, καὶ τού- “τους παραφυλάττειν, καὶ ἐν διαφόροις διάφορα “πλήθη συνάγειν.

English · Claude translation

For by some reasoning such self-will had seized them and such folly had taken hold of them that they did not follow what had been instituted by the ancients, which perhaps their own ancestors had first established, but according to their own purpose and as each wished, so they made laws for themselves and observed them, and gathered various multitudes in various places.

About this passage

Source
Dindorf 4:380 · 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

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (repeated syllable in the digital text): ἐπεί- “περ περ τινὶ → ἐπεί- “περ τινὶ.

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.17.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/17/7/).

Plain text
Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.17.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/17/7/).

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