Church History 9.8.3 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: These disasters exposed Maximin's boast that his idolatry had spared his reign from famine, plague, and war, and foreshadowed his fall.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:430

ἀθρόως δὴ ταῦτα πάντα ὑφʼ ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν συρρεύσαντα καιρὸν τῆς τοῦ τυράννου θρασύτητος τὴν κατὰ τοῦ θείου μεγαλαυχίαν διήλεγξεν, ὅτι δὴ τῆς περὶ τὰ εἴδωλα αὐτοῦ σπουδῆς καὶ τῆς καθʼ ἡμῶν ἕνεκα πολιορκίας μὴ λιμὸν μηδὲ λοιμὸν μηδὲ μὴν πόλεμον ἐπὶ τῶν αὐτοῦ συμβῆναι καιρῶν ἐθρασύνετο. ταῦτα δʼ οὖν ὁμοῦ καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπελθόντα καὶ τῆς αὐτοῦ καταστροφῆς περιειλήφει τὰ προοίμια.

English · Claude translation

All these things flowing together suddenly at one and the same time refuted the tyrant's boldness and his boasting against the divine, for he had boasted that because of his zeal for the idols and his assault on us neither famine nor plague nor war had occurred in his times. These things, coming all together and at once, formed the prelude of his downfall.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:430 · 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. 9.8.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/8/3/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.8.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/8/3/).