In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past 9781032199818, 9781472474681, 9781315599120

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Note on texts and translations
List of fgures
Foreword: past, present, and future in Orosius and late antique historiography
Introduction
1 Orosius as a writer of history
2 The making of time
3 The emperor and the divine
4 Apologetics and the providence of war
5 The sack of Rome: Christianizing disaster
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

In Defance of History

This volume offers a counterbalance to the dismissal that Orosius’s Histories Against the Pagans has suffered in most recent criticism. Orosius is traditionally considered to be a mediocre scholar and an essentially worthless historian. This book takes his literary endeavour seriously, recognizing the unique contribution the Histories made at a crucial moment of debate and uncertainty, where the present was shaped by restructuring the past. The signifcance of the Histories is recognized intrinsically rather than only in comparison with other texts and authors, principally Augustine of Hippo, Orosius's mentor. The approach of the book is historiographical, exploring the form, purpose, and meaning of the Histories. The themes of divine providence, monotheism, and imperial authority are examined, and the subjects of war and the sack of Rome receive extended analysis. The book foregrounds Orosius’s signifcant historiographical innovations that are seldom explored, such as the subversion of imperial history within a Christian spectrum in the synchronization of the emperor Augustus and Christ. Each chapter contributes to the progression of knowledge about Orosius’s Histories and the wider literary and historiographical culture of disruption that characterised the late fourth and early ffth centuries CE. Victoria Leonard is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities at Coventry University, and at the Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research focuses on the late antique and early medieval western Mediterranean. She has published on religious confict, gender and violence, and ancient historiography. Most recently, she co-edited the volume Bodily Fluids in Antiquity with Mark Bradley and Laurence Totelin, which was published by Routledge in 2021.

In Defance of History Orosius and the Unimproved Past

Victoria Leonard

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Victoria Leonard The right of Victoria Leonard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Leonard, Victoria, author. Title: In defiance of history : Orosius and the unimproved past / Victoria Leonard. Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021046961 | ISBN 9781472474681 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032199818 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315599120 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Orosius, Paulus. Historiarum adversus paganos libri VII. | Rhetoric, Ancient. | Rome—Historiography. | Rome—Religion. Classification: LCC DG205 .L46 2022 | DDC 937.0072—dc23/ eng/20211023 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046961 ISBN: 978-1-4724-7468-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-19981-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-59912-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315599120 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

This book is dedicated to Alice, my favourite colleague, and to Llewellyn, my seren loyw. And to Mrs Jones, who said I couldn’t. But I did.

Contents

Acknowledgements Note on texts and translations List of fgures Foreword: past, present, and future in Orosius and late antique historiography

ix xi xiii xv

M A R K H U M PH R I E S

Introduction

1

1

Orosius as a writer of history

17

2

The making of time

48

3

The emperor and the divine

78

4

Apologetics and the providence of war

105

5

The sack of Rome: Christianizing disaster

128

Bibliography Index

147 169

Acknowledgements

This book had a long gestation period, and accrued vast debts of gratitude along the way. Many people and institutions provided material, intellectual, and emotional support over the years. I owe Katherine Harloe and Liz Gloyn more than I can express. Blossom Stefaniw, Jenny Barry, and Sarah Bond were pole stars. Greg Woolf, Kate Cooper, Laurence Totelin, and Julia Hillner saw something and made critical investments. The doctoral thesis from which this book emerged was completed at the Centre for Late Antique Religion and Culture at Cardiff University, and was generously supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Mark Humphries, Shaun Tougher, Nic Baker-Brian, and Josef Lössl expertly examined and supervised the thesis. So many people generously read parts of the manuscript at various stages, provided academic therapy and advice, sent research materials, or pushed me forward, including: Richard Flower, Emma Bridges, Benjamin Garstad, Graeme Ward, Mathura Umachandran, Philip Rousseau, Amal Shehata, Becca Grose, Averil Cameron, Naomi Appleton, David Natal, Sukanya Raisharma, Richard, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Ulriika Vihervalli, Jamie Wood, Fabian Schultz, Helen Lovatt, Adrastos Omissi, Alice, Conrad Leyser, Rachel Minto, Michael Williams, my parents, Elisa Manso and Cameron Wachowich. I thank my readers for their care and consideration, and absolve them from any blame for the faults that remain, which I claim. Too many audiences to recall here have engaged with this research at various stages, but most recently thanks to the Late Roman Seminar at Oxford University for their insightful feedback. Thanks especially to Louise Moody, Juliet Simpson, and Judith Mossman, and all of my wonderful colleagues in the Centre for Arts, Memory, and Communities, Coventry University, and to the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London for their support. The International Orosian Network has provided much inspiration and distraction; I hope this warm and genial community enjoys many more years. Jane Burkowski’s acute eye was invaluable in the fnal stages, and I could not have wished for a more patient and encouraging editor than Michael Greenwood at Routledge. Thanks to Brepols for their permission to reuse a previously published

x

Acknowledgements

section, and to the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral for permission to include an image of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. Lastly, I must recognize my indebtedness to the published work of Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet. Without her three-volume critical edition of the Historiae, this book would not have been written.

Note on texts and translations

References where no author is specifed are to Orosius’s Historiae adversus paganos, edited by Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, Orose: Histoires contre les païens, 3 vols (Paris: Budé, 1990). Book, chapter, volume, and page numbers accompanying Latin quotations or paraphrased passages are to this edition. Translations from the Historiae are from Roy J. Deferrari’s English translation published in 1964, with my modifcations. Book, chapter, and page numbers accompanying English quotations are to this edition.

Figures

I.1

The inscription from the Hereford mappa mundi, which dates to the thirteenth century. The map is inscribed on the lower right corner, just above the fgure on horseback: Descripcio orosii de ornesta mundi sicut interius ostenditur (‘Orosius’s account, De ornesta mundi, as shown within’)

3

Foreword Past, present, and future in Orosius and late antique historiography Mark Humphries

It is a great pleasure and honour to introduce Victoria Leonard’s monograph on Orosius’s Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans. Her study refects a growing scholarly interest in an author who has not just been much neglected but also much maligned. Literary reputations are often relative, but that of Orosius has cast him in a particularly unfavourable light. On the one hand, he has been regarded as not measuring up to his more illustrious contemporaries such as the church father Augustine of Hippo or the historian Ammianus Marcellinus.1 On the other hand, his skills as a narrator of history have attracted much criticism: his account of earlier history has been regarded as derivative, while that of his own times has won few admirers. In particular, his efforts to minimize the signifcance of the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 CE have been regarded as apologetic special pleading that misrepresents the episode for polemical ends. It is hard to escape the impression that Orosius’s narrative has been more often consulted for occasional nuggets of information or perspectives that are not preserved in any other extant source,2 than read for its own sake. Yet recently historians have begun to challenge this negative appraisal, and Victoria Leonard’s book rides a scholarly wave that takes more seriously Orosius’s historiographical and ideological goals and his relationship to the wider historical tradition.3 In large measure, it is Orosius’s explicitly religious agenda in the Historiae that has caused numerous modern readers to distrust him. In the late eighteenth century, Edward Gibbon, in some excoriating footnotes (sometimes the best parts of his Decline and Fall), labelled Orosius a ‘bigot’ and complained, in connection with the attribution of Stilicho’s victory in 405 over the Goth Radagaisus to divine intervention, ‘How many interesting facts might Orosius have inserted in the vacant space which is devoted to pious nonsense.’4 However much this religious perspective might have repulsed a child of Enlightenment rationalism like Gibbon, it was, of course, central to Orosius’s whole endeavour: he wrote his narrative contra paganos, meaning that it had, like the very label ‘pagan’ itself, a polemical edge. This aim is stated clearly in Orosius’s Preface, where he remarks that he wrote the work at Augustine’s bidding.

xvi

Foreword You had instructed me to write against the arrogant wickedness of those who are strangers from the city of God and are called pagans, taking their name from crossroads and felds in the countryside, or otherwise gentiles because they know of the things of this world. These men, as they do not look to the future and have either forgotten or are ignorant of the past, besmirch the present as a time particularly full of evils, far beyond those which are always with us, and do so for this reason alone: because Christ is believed in a God worshipped, while their idols are worshipped the less.5

The touchstone of this debate was the response to the sack of Rome by Alaric’s Goths in August 410. Pagans had regarded this event as proof that the abandonment of Rome’s ancestral gods had paved the way to utter ruin. Even for some Christians, the event was unsettling: Jerome could barely conceal his distress that ‘the city that had taken the whole world was itself taken’.6 A signifcant part of Orosius’s notoriety rests on his determination to diminish the signifcance of the episode, and to depict it as much less damaging than earlier acts of destruction such as the sack by the Gauls in 390 (or 386) BCE, the confagration of 50 (or 52) BCE, or the great fre of 64 CE under Nero.7 Intimately connected with this repudiation of the cataclysmic signifcance of the Gothic sack was Orosius’s prognosis for the future. His sequel to the sack of Rome was the tantalizing prospect that Goths and Romans might come together in alliance. In Orosius’s account, this was the express desire of Alaric’s immediate successor as Gothic leader, Athaulf. At an earlier stage in his life, Athaulf had expressed an ambition to obliterate Romania (a world dominated by Rome) and supplant it with Gothia (one dominated by the Goths). But later his opinion shifted towards forging a future state governed by laws, in which Romans and Goths would come together, so that he might be ‘remembered by posterity as the author of Rome’s renewal’.8 Athaulf’s ambition came to grief when a Gothic clique, hostile to his goals, murdered him at Barcelona in 415 (7.43.8, 3:129), but it remained the aspiration of his successors: the last image that Orosius leaves us with in his narrative is of the Gothic king Vallia wishing to fnd a peaceful accommodation with Rome (7.43.9–15, 3:129–31). The very possibility of such a positive future was for Orosius a powerful demonstration of God’s providential role in human history. To be sure, the future would also ultimately bring about the Last Judgement ‘in those fnal days at the end of the world’, when ‘there will come troubles the likes of which have never been seen before’.9 But that was clearly, in Orosius’s view, an exception (albeit an inescapable one, foretold in prophecy) to the workings of observable history. The rest of human experience demonstrated unquestionably the power of True Religion – Christianity – to secure salvation, and the power of Christ’s grace to mark out the Christian epoch ‘from the previous chaos of disbelief’.10

Foreword xvii It is easy to think, on account of his evocation of salvation and the Final Judgement, that Orosius’s approach to history is at best unique if not utterly eccentric. In fact, as scholars have long recognized, his work shows considerable affnity with the classical tradition on which it explicitly depends, just as his Latin demonstrates literary fair.11 Even that evocation in his Preface of the intersections of the future and the past owes much to the classical historiographical tradition, which, from its origins, simultaneously looked forward to the future just as it refected on the past. In the ffth century BCE, Herodotus remarked that he wrote about the wars between Greeks and Persians ‘so that things done by man not be forgotten in time’.12 A generation later, Thucydides stated that he viewed his history as ‘an aid to the interpretation of the future’ and ‘a possession for all time’.13 In the second century BCE, Polybius similarly saw the knowledge of the past as a guide to dealing with the vicissitudes of future turns of fortune, while remarking too that not only was the nascent Roman empire greater than earlier imperial states but also would likely have no future rival.14 Roman authors in later centuries manifested similar concerns. That great narrator of frst-century CE history, Tacitus, was keen to offer honest moral judgements on virtue and vice in his Annals for fear of posterity’s denunciations.15 In the late fourth century, the closing words of the fnal book of Ammianus Marcellinus’s history contained guidance to future authors who might continue the narrative of the style they should adopt.16 Of course, Orosius’s conception of a past, present, and future extending from Creation to the Last Judgement was explicitly Christian, and that sets him apart from those classical historians just surveyed.17 But his work is also signifcantly different from the new Christian ecclesiastical historiography developed by Eusebius of Caesarea in the late third and early fourth centuries, and augmented by a number of continuators down to the sixth century. Even if these continuators had to revise the frameworks of Church history to suit a world where Christianity was increasingly the religion of the Roman empire, and where sacred and secular affairs were deeply interwoven,18 they nevertheless preserved Eusebius’s primary focus on ecclesiastical matters such as the successions of bishops at major sees and the challenges posed by heresy to orthodoxy. In some respects, Orosius’s approach overlapped with the concerns of ecclesiastical historians. He certainly saw the Christian Church as the institution through which God’s redemption of sinful humankind could be achieved.19 Similarly, he was scathing in his condemnation of those forms of Christian belief he regarded as heretical.20 But a comparison between Orosius’s account of the Christian empire ushered in under Constantine and that found in Eusebius’s continuators such as Rufnus, Socrates, or Sozomen also points to their profound differences. In particular, Orosius’s chief concern lay with the demonstration of God’s infuence in secular affairs, rather than offering a detailed account of the fractious ecclesiastical politics of the post-Constantinian empire. His is a history lacking notices of achievements by bishops like Athanasius of Alexandria or John

xviii

Foreword

Chrysostom,21 and largely without direct references to the multiple Church councils at which Trinitarian doctrine had been debated in the decades following the Council of Nicaea (325 CE).22 Although it differs from ecclesiastical historiography, Orosius’s narrative bears comparison with another Christian narrative form that had been pioneered by Eusebius of Caesarea: the chronicle.23 Like the Historiae, this offered a universalizing vision of the past, albeit one that tended to focus on, and reach its climax with, Rome and its empire.24 In Eusebius’s original, the narrative began with the Old Testament patriarch Abraham – although later chroniclers displayed few qualms in pushing their coverage back to Creation, as does Orosius.25 Eusebius’s chronicle was transmitted to the West in a Latin translation by Jerome that also continued the narrative down to the year 378, and which was one of Orosius’s sources.26 In turn, Jerome’s version itself found many continuators down to the end of the sixth century.27 While these chroniclers followed Eusebius and Jerome in scrupulously noting ecclesiastical matters such as episcopal successions, their overall structure, which presented a universal history from the beginning of the world down to their own times, has clear affnities with Orosius’s narrative bookended by Creation and the Last Judgement. Indeed, one of Jerome’s continuators, Hydatius of Lemica (like Orosius, a Spaniard), writing later in the ffth century, went further than most in imagining that the End Times were imminent.28 Yet it is important also to stress signifcant differences between Orosius and the chronicle tradition. Not the least of these was format. Even if it was possible for individual chronicles to articulate particular views about the past,29 their layout – which tabulated the past into lists of entries generally organized under individual years – mitigated against the development of the sorts of extended and nuanced rhetorical arguments possible in a continuous prose narrative. Indeed, it is clear that some of the successors of Eusebius and Jerome found the format so cumbersome that they chose to alter it quite radically. While Eusebius’s original Greek chronicle is now lost, it is clear from how it is refected in Jerome’s Latin version that its layout on the page was even more complicated than just a year-by-year tabulation of events: the histories of different parts of the world were set out in separate columns.30 This was unwieldy not only for later copyists (another reason, besides Eusebius’s controversial rejection of using chronology for eschatological purposes,31 why the Greek original no longer survives) but also for a number of continuators, who opted to simplify the layout substantially. Prosper of Aquitaine, one of Jerome’s ffth-century continuators, dispensed with this complex arrangement entirely, offering an epitome of Eusebius and Jerome’s account in which the narrative was set out in a single column.32 The later Greek chronographic tradition, refected by John Malalas in the sixth century and George Synkellos and Theophanes in the early ninth, similarly eschewed a complex layout in parallel columns for a single, integrated narrative.33

Foreword xix This indicates one of the attractions of Orosius’s Historiae: it provided exactly such an integrated narrative that, in spite of its length, could be copied without needing to pay attention to a cumbersome format. Moreover, it offered an account of the whole sweep of human history framed by an explicitly Christian conception of Creation, a factor that presumably made it an appealing narrative for readers throughout medieval Christendom. And this points to another link between Orosius and the future – the future fate of the Historiae. As is well known, the work was popular in the Middle Ages. Compared with the delicate thread that represents the textual transmission of celebrated classical Roman historians such as Tacitus and Ammianus, the number of surviving manuscripts of Orosius’s Historiae offers a staggering contrast.34 This points to the wide circulation of a work that was plainly infuential in many different ways: it served as a major source and inspiration for a range of historical works throughout the Middle Ages; it was translated into languages as diverse as Old English and Arabic; the geographical excursus in the frst book not only circulated independently as a convenient description of the world, but is mentioned also as a source of one of the most celebrated surviving medieval visual depictions of the world, the mappa mundi at Hereford Cathedral.35 All of this indicates how the opprobrium heaped on Orosius by many modern scholars is out of kilter with his reputation in earlier centuries. Within a century of his death, Orosius was celebrated by Gennadius of Marseille for his eloquence and historical learning, while Pope Gelasius I (492–6) described the Historiae as a still indispensable aid to challenging the calumnies of pagans against the faith.36 Here, then, is an author who was much admired for centuries, and whose current poor reputation is a relatively recent development originating in an Enlightenment preference for ‘reason’ over ‘superstition’. Orosius patently demands a more sympathetic treatment that seeks to understand what made his narrative so appealing for a millennium and more. It is precisely this sort of corrective that scholarship in the last few decades has begun to offer, and to which Victoria Leonard’s careful study makes a signifcant contribution.

Notes 1 Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–15. 2 In fact, Orosius’s divergences are best seen as manifestations of ‘the literary independence and creativity of his pointedly polemical and deliberately Christian history’. Mattias Gassman, ‘The Roman Kings in Orosius’ Historiae adversvm paganos’, The Classical Quarterly 67, no. 2 (2017): 630. 3 See Victoria Leonard’s Introduction (1–16) below. 4 Quotations from, respectively, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 3 (London: Strahan and Cadell, 1781), 85n46 and 166n77. 5 Prologue 9, 1:8: Praeceperas mihi, uti adversus vaniloquam pravitatem eorum, qui alieni a civitate Dei ex locorum agrestium conpitis et pagis pagani vocantur sive gentiles quia terrena sapiunt, qui cum futura non quaerant, praeterita autem aut

xx

6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

Foreword obliviscantur aut nesciant, praesentia tamen tempora veluti malis extra solitum infestatissima ob hoc solum quod creditur Christus et colitur Deus, idola autem minus coluntur, infamant. Throughout this foreword, I use the fne translation of Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans, trans. by A. T. Fear (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010). Jerome, Epistula 127.12: capitur urbs, quae totum cepit orbem. 2.19.12–15, 1:126–7 (Gauls); 6.14.5, 2:203–4 (52/50 BCE); 7.7.4–6, 3:33 (Nero), with explicit comparison with Alaric at 7.39.15–17, 3:116–17. 7.43.6, 3:129: habereturque apud posteros Romanae restitutionis auctor. Prologue 15–16, 1:9: exceptis videlicet semotisque illis diebus novissimis sub fne saeculi et sub apparitione Antichristi vel etiam sub conclusione iudicii, quibus futuras angustias, quales ante non fuerint, dominus Christus per scripturas sanctas sua etiam contestatione praedixit, cum secundum ipsum quidem qui et nunc et semper est modum, verum apertiore ac graviore discrimine, per intolerabiles tribulationes temporum illorum sanctos probatio, impios perditio consequetur. Prologue 14, 1:12 (salvation); 7.43.19, 3:131–2 (the Christian epoch distinguished ab illa incredulitatis confusione). On Orosius’s debt to classical rhetoric, see esp. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History; for his Latinity, Fear, Orosius, 11. See also Victoria Leonard’s Chapter 4 (105–127) below for the prominence of war in Orosius, another point of contact with the themes of classical historiography. Herodotus 1.1. Thucydides 1.22.4. Polybius 1.1.2; 1.2.7. Tacitus, Annales 3.65. Ammianus Marcellinus 31.16.9, with Gavin Kelly, ‘The sphragis and Closure of the Res gestae’, in Ammianus after Julian: The Reign of Valentinian and Valens in Books 26–31, ed. by Jan den Boeft, Daniël den Hengst, Hans C. Teitler, and Jan Willem Drijvers (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 219–41. For the construction of time in Orosius, see Victoria Leonard’s Chapter 2 (48–77) below. The locus classicus is Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 5 proem; cf. Jerome, Vita Malchi 1.3. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 186–206. For example, 7.28.23–5, 3:77–8 (Arianism and the Council of Nicaea); 7.29.3–4, 3:80 (Arianism of Constantius II); 7.33.1–4, 3:88 (Arianism of Valens). The only reference to Ambrose of Milan, for example, is to his post mortem appearance in a dream of the Moorish prince Mascezil during the war with Gildo in 397: 7.36.7, 3:104–5. Nicaea is mentioned at 7.28.25, 3:78, but there is not a whisper about the Council of Constantinople in Orosius’s account of the reign of Theodosius. The account of theological debates under Constantius II (7.29.3–4, 3:80) can be read as alluding only in general terms to the circumstances that saw a plethora of councils convened in the 340s and 350s. Giuseppe Zecchini, ‘Latin Historiography: Jerome, Orosius and the Western Chronicles’, in Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century AD, ed. by Gabriele Marasco (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 317–49. Cf. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 170–85. 1.1.1–5, 1:10 sets out this chronological agenda while noting that little was known about the period from Adam to Abraham. For Eusebius’s starting point, see T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 115. See also Rosamond McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006),

Foreword xxi

26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36

9–12, highlighting that a reckoning from Creation was already included in the chronological summing up in Jerome’s Latin version, even if the narrative itself only began with Abraham. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 103–11. Richard W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time: The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD, volume 1, A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from Its Origins to the High Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 184–7. Richard W. Burgess, ‘Hydatius and the Final Frontier: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the End of the World’, in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. by Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith S. Sivan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 321–32. Mark Humphries, ‘Narrative and Space in Christian Chronography: John of Biclaro on East, West, and Orthodoxy’, in Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity, ed. by Peter Van Nuffelen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 86–112. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 116–17. Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, 125. Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, 184–5. Cyril A. Mango and Roger Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), lii–liii. Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet (ed.), Orose: Histoires contre les païens (Paris: Budé, 1990), 1: lxvii–xcvii. For its circulation in full, in part, and in the form of epitomes, see Rosamund McKitterick and Robert Evans, ‘A Carolingian Epitome of Orosius from Tours: Leiden VLQ 20’, in Historiography and Identity III: Carolingian Approaches, ed. by Ross Kramer, Helmut Reimitz, and Graeme Ward (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 123–53. Medieval infuence: Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History 400-1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). Translations: Janet Bately (ed. and trans.), The Old English Orosius (London: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 1980) and Malcolm R. Godden (ed. and trans.), The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016) (Old English); Mayte Penelas (ed.), Kitāb Hurūšiyūš: traducción árabe de las ‘Historiae adversus paganos’ de Orosio (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científcas, Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 2001) and Jorge Elices Ocón and Eduardo Manzano Moreno, ‘Uses of the Past in Early Medieval Iberia (Eighth to Tenth Centuries)’, Medieval Worlds 10 (2019): 95–7 (Arabic). Geographical infuence and the independent circulation of Book 1: A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35–99; Mark Humphries, ‘A New Created World: Classical Geographical Texts and Christian Contexts in Late Antiquity’, in Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2007), 51–4. Gennadius, De viris inlustribus 40; Gelasius, Epistula 42.4.4, with Bronwen Neil and Pauline Allen, The Letters of Pope Gelasius I (492-496): Pastor and MicroManager of the Church of Rome (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 59–60; 161–2.

Introduction

‘The words are purposes. The words are maps.’1 Adrienne Rich, ‘Diving into the Wreck’ ‘He changeth times and ages: taketh away kingdoms, and establisheth them’ [Dan. 2.21]. Let us not marvel, therefore, if at any time we see kings and empires succeed one another, for it is by the will of God that they are governed, changed and ended.’2 Jerome, Commentariorum in Danielem

The victorious march of a heroic and beleaguered church is a good story. In his Historiae, Orosius did not complicate or subvert this story from the frst three centuries CE, but he did not tell it either. Instead, he assumed the premise of mastery and picked up the threads from this concluded narrative, pushing on to a new phase of Christian historiography to show how the Christian God was ever-present in this story, and had been all along. Orosius’s Historiae fxated on making that presence not only evident, but foundational, and impossible to ignore. The Historiae does not engage in counter-storytelling; it does not tell a new story, it tells a very old story in a new way, and it trammels its own course to its peculiar truth. Eusebius of Caesarea had declared himself the frst Christian historian in the early fourth century. Writing one hundred years later, Orosius did not situate himself and his work within the written history of Christianity. He ignored Christian historiography, springboarding into his discourse on the past by citing Scripture and denigrating his pagan predecessors. Through his dedication, Orosius made his work contingent on Augustine and his De civitate Dei, but critics have pushed against the notion that Orosius was Augustine’s compliant discipulus, or that he subscribed to Augustine’s theological understanding of divine authority, sin, and human salvation. If Eusebius took his own path in writing his Ecclesiastical History, Orosius certainly forged a new path with the Historiae, and deliberately set his text apart.3 The Historiae has been treated as separate, unique even, but without an appreciable awareness of Orosius’s gift for innovation.

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599120-1

2

Introduction

The exceptionality of the Historiae is perhaps indicated by its incredibly rich and diverse reception over the subsequent centuries. The work was never short of readers or those who wanted to reframe Orosius’s ideas within a new context, as indicated by the cumulus of surviving manuscripts, at least 275 according to some calculations, the oldest dating from the sixth century.4 The contrast with the transmission of other texts from antiquity, such as Ammianus Marcellinus or Arnobius of Sicca, both of which survive only in one or two manuscripts, is considerable. The Historiae had an enormous impact on the historiography of later periods, and it became the standard point of reference for the medieval and early modern worlds on antiquity.5 While critics have understood that the Historiae did not attract a contemporary readership, the text was cited in the ffth century.6 The authority of the text was frmly established by Pope Gelasius in 494 CE in his decree De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis (‘On Authorized and Non-Authorized Books’), where the Historiae is described as an ‘indispensable text’.7 Gelasius’s decree functioned as an index of canonical and heretical works in later periods.8 In his continuation of Jerome’s De viris illustribus, Gennadius describes Orosius as ‘a man most eloquent and learned in history’.9 The pull of the Historiae’s infuence began with Fulgentius the mythographer and grammarian, a near contemporary of Orosius, who relied heavily on the Historiae.10 Although the date of composition is debated, the anonymous Origo Constantini also took freely from the Historiae, inserting quotations from the text to make Christian what was otherwise pagan history.11 Orosius’s impact is discernible in Jordanes, writing in the sixth century, and extends to Gregory of Tours, Gildas, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Paul the Deacon, Otto of Freising, Peter Abelard, Honorius of Autun, John of Salisbury, Ranulf Higden, and Petrarch, to name only a few writers.12 The geographical description of the world which opens the text was circulated separately and was considered to be authoritative throughout the Middle Ages, and the infuence of the Historiae can be discerned within the early twelfth-century De imagine mundi.13 The representation of Alexander the Great in the Historiae was enormously infuential in the genre of the Alexander Romance.14 Orosius’s name appears as a stamp of authority on Hereford’s thirteenth-century mappa mundi (Figure I.1), and he is given a starring role in Dante’s tenth canto of the Paradiso.15 The dastardly accusation by Edward Gibbon’s vociferous critic Mr Davis that Gibbon has not read Orosius is used synecdochically to question his credibility as a historian. In response, Gibbon writes: He [Mr Davis] is even bold enough (bold is not the proper word) to conceive some hopes of persuading his readers that an historian who has employed several years of his life, and several hundred pages, on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, had never read Orosius, or the Augustan History; and that he was forced to borrow, at second hand, his quotations from the Theodosian code.16

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Figure I.1 The inscription from the Hereford mappa mundi, which dates to the thirteenth century. The map is inscribed on the lower right corner, just above the fgure on horseback: Descripcio orosii de ornesta mundi sicut interius ostenditur (‘Orosius’s account, De ornesta mundi, as shown within’).

In what Bowersock describes as ‘palpable hits’, Gibbon scorchingly professes himself not to be desirous of Mr Davis’s acquaintance, but he invites Mr Davis to visit his well-furnished library when he is not at home, where he will presumably fnd Orosius’s Historiae in pride of place.17 This academic posturing illuminates the Historiae without the weight of critical opprobrium that came in later centuries. Gibbon appears so often as a touchstone for modern discussions of antiquity, and yet his high estimation of Orosius did not set a scholarly precedent. In more recent periods, the Historiae has been critically marginalized, or a narrower range of questions have been asked of the text. For most of the twentieth century, scholarship has kept returning to the issues of Orosius’s relationship with Augustine, and his reliability as a historian. Subjectivity, it seems, is not dead. Concerns about Orosius’s profciency prompted J. B. Bury’s condemnation that the Historiae ‘deserves more than any other book to be described as the frst attempt at a universal history, and it was

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Introduction

probably the worst’.18 In a stinging attack, John Matthews indexes Orosius as an ‘alleged historian’, and boils over in frustration and indignation at the uneven survival of late antique texts: ...the manuscripts, numbered in hundreds, of the ffth-century Christian apologetic historian Orosius, of which a round [sic] twenty precede the tenth century – such representation of a writer whose qualities as a historian, when compared with those of Ammianus (and even when not compared with them), are an embarrassment to the profession.19 Matthews seems to take Orosius’s status as a historian as a personal affront, and approaches manuscript transmission as a zero-sum game. In his exasperation, Matthews derides Orosius as ‘an unusually potent example of what is true of other ancient authors, in acquiring nearly all his prominence by refected light’.20 Such disparagement makes little attempt to investigate the interrelation between fgures such as Jerome, Augustine, or Paulinus of Nola and Orosius, and how these interrelations infuenced or sustained the reception of the Historiae. Orosius’s unalloyed defciency as a historian (and as a theologian) is attributed by other critical voices to his stupidity. Reading the Historiae as a failure of the mind detracts agency from Orosius’s project and functions as a dismissal. François Paschoud engages seriously with Orosius and his work elsewhere, but he describes Orosius as ‘un épigone stérile qui suit avec des œillères la voie que lui a indiquée la maître, sans se render compte des contradictions dans lesquelles il s’empêtre’, and his work as ‘l’œuvre d’un petit esprit’.21 A devoted Augustinian, R. A. Markus criticizes Orosius’s ‘monumental shallowness of mind’, while A. H. M. Jones concludes Orosius’s argument to be ‘too perverse to carry conviction to any reasonable man’.22 Theresa Urbainczyk recognizes that Orosius’s historiographical approach differed from Ammianus’s, but nevertheless perceives that ‘his clumsy attempts to fnd reasons for events’ deserve mockery.23 Dissatisfaction with Orosius’s intellectualism blends into distaste for his style and a lack of conviction in his discourse, as demonstrated by Chester Starr’s indictment of the Historiae as ‘one of the feeblest in the Greco-Roman tradition of history’.24 Denys Hay reviles Orosius as ‘a repetitive bore, grinding out his apologia for Christianity with complete conviction and a total lack of fre, save perhaps towards the end’.25 Reliability, conviction, and truth come full circle with James Harvey Robinson arguing that ‘[t]he most reckless and sensational sermon of a professional revivalist of the present would be as reliable a source of objective truth as he [Orosius]’.26 Without taking into account the signifcant and sustained infuence of the text, such scholarly judgements are disproportionate. But they are valuable for their insight, particularly in revealing how critical perspectives determine conclusions, and in prompting the question why the Historiae more than other ancient texts attracts strong condemnation.

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The legacy of this reception can be traced back to innovative Renaissance approaches to writing history. These challenged the dominance of Orosius’s historical philosophy in the Middle Ages that centred the Creation and divine providence.27 This interpretative shift, described as ‘the revenge of the ancients’ by William J. Connell, began particularly with Petrarch, who was one in a long line of humanists that catalogued the factual and programmatic failings of Orosius.28 Connell argues that Orosius suffered more than any other ancient writer with the revival of learning in the fourteenth century, which stripped Augustinian thought of nine centuries of Orosian interpretation. In a striking precursor to John Matthews, in the mid-sixteenth century, Onofrio Panvinio denounced Orosius as ‘unworthy of the name of historian’.29 Isaac Casaubon described Orosius’s ‘astonishing ignorance of Roman affairs’, and Justus Lipsius condemned his writings as disgraceful to legitimate history.30 In broad brushstrokes, our perspective on classical antiquity is very much a Renaissance view, to the extent that alternative visions of the past are diffcult to perceive. Orosius’s Historiae certainly did provide that alternative vision, and it dominated historiographical approaches throughout the Middle Ages. The striking disapproval of Orosius in more recent criticism can therefore be understood as part of a continuum in the Renaissance turn away from Orosian conceptions of the past. Modern critical condemnations of the Historiae can also be connected to the generic misunderstanding of the work. Described as ‘unruly and not always coherent’, the intrinsic nature of the text, in its purpose and function, in the voice that directs it, and in the expected audience, makes the critical process of locating the genre of the Historiae particularly challenging – it is almost impossible to designate exactly what the text is.31 A variety of stylistic allegiances are held in tension in the Historiae, including elements of epitome, breviarium, polemic, chronicle, apologia, theology, protology, and universal history.32 The Historiae has even been received as a textbook.33 J. G. A. Pocock understands the Historiae as a rejection of historiography, while others have seen the text very much as a work of history, a genre that has been subdivided into world history, church history, universal history, and Christian history.34 More recently, it has been argued that Orosius cannot be understood as the paradigm of Christian historiography, but as an important exception to it.35 This tension within modern scholarship is linked to the unpopularity of the text: the misdiagnosis of genre, especially of traditional and truthful historiography, means that critical anticipation is often disappointed, and according to generic expectations, the text is notably defcient. The jarring of awkward categorization and the Historiae as a text that fails to ft is leant on by Peter Van Nuffelen to understand the stigmatization of the Historiae as an inadequate assessment of contemporary time. The fool’s paradise Orosius offers jars with a conventional view of the declining Roman western Mediterranean in the ffth century: ‘It is the tragedy of Orosius that the green shoots of the stabilization of Roman power,

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Introduction

which lend his vision some credibility, were soon swept away, leaving his optimism destitute.’36 Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet similarly perceives Orosius’s Historiae as a victim of history. Just as access to the text was improved with Karl Zangemeister’s edition in 1882, so interest in the text diminished. Arnaud-Lindet sees the Historiae as disadvantaged in its abbreviation of sources that were almost all transmitted in their complete state, and by the complex and diffcult nature of the text, which deters critical engagement.37 Critical comparisons and disappointments are a recurrent theme in Orosian studies; the systematic comparison with Augustine and his ideas rarely fnds in Orosius’s favour, and often serves to underline his paucity of intellect.38 For W. H. C. Frend, Augustine’s ‘majestic’ De civitate Dei is ‘incomparably deeper in theological conception’ than the Historiae.39 This view is echoed by Pocock, who considers Augustine’s to be ‘by far the greatest work’, while the success of the Historiae is debatable, and Markus reads the Historiae only as evidence that Orosius had ‘wholly failed to understand his master’s mind’.40 Henri-Irénée Marrou considered Orosius to be ‘un disciple zélé, mais péchant par excès de zèle, pour notre malheur, point trop intelligent’.41 In place of the nuance of De civitate Dei, Marrou found in the Historiae only ‘a sort of naïve providentialism’ which rewarded the good, punished the bad, and determined secular history.42 These subjective value judgements locate the Historiae and De civitate Dei on opposite polarities rather than acknowledging that Augustine and Orosius worked from a shared premise, and do not recognize either Orosius’s independent agency as author or the nature of his project in the Historiae.43 Orosius’s work has been critically judged and judged harshly, but mostly against the wrong criteria, centred either on standards of theological intellectualism set by Augustine, or according to ideals of truth, objectivity, and reliability. This book moves away from the ideology of historicism – that texts from antiquity are useful only as far as they allow us accurately to reconstruct a narrative of the past – understanding that these were not Orosius’s objectives in writing the Historiae. These two interrelated perceptions of Orosius as a failed historian, and the Historiae as falling short of Augustine’s expectations, have coexisted throughout the twentieth century. The Historiae has been foregrounded as a text in need of continual revision, and in recent years it has experienced something of a renaissance, as part of the rehabilitation of marginalized classical and late antique literature.44 This resurgence in critical attention to the Historiae began in the early 1990s with the publication of a critical edition of the Historiae in three volumes by Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet.45 A. T. Fear’s translation into English appeared in 2010, and is somewhere in between a stand-alone translation and a commentary, while Peter Van Nuffelen’s monograph, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, was published in 2012. Van Nuffelen’s approach recontextualized the Historiae within late antique rhetorical culture and historiography, a tradition he positioned as fully continuous with that of ‘classical’ antiquity. Also published in 2012

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was Brenda Deen Schildgen’s comparative analysis of the Bible, Virgil, Orosius, Augustine, and Dante, which centralized Orosius as the creator of the theory of divine providence in human history.46 Her work was important in directing attention back to the later reception of ideas that originated with Orosius, particularly in Dante. As these studies have accumulated, the complexity of the Historiae and Orosius’s profciency as a writer, capable of nuance and subtlety, and fully in charge of his own overarching historiographical interpretation of the past, have been made apparent. While more recent criticism has brought a renewed and particular focus to the Historiae, a critical turn has been foreseen before, and periodic revivals of interest have previously occurred. In his 1976 edition and Italian translation of the Historiae, Adolf Lippold identifed a renaissance in the post-Second World War era, and over the second half of the twentieth century, there has been sustained, if not highly concentrated, critical attention to Orosian studies.47 Numerous editions and modern-language translations of the Latin Historiae and vernacular refashionings have appeared such as Spanish (Sánchez Salor, 1982; Torres Rodríguez, 1985), Portuguese (Farmhouse Alberto and Furtado, 2000), Italian (Lippold and Bartalucci, 1976), Aragonese (Romero Cambrón and García Pinilla, 2008), Arabic (Penelas, 2001), and most recently, Malcom R. Godden’s edition and translation of the Old English Orosius, published in 2016.48 Important German-language critical contributions were made by Hans-Werner Goetz in the 1980s, as well as Reinhart Herzog, Dorothea Koch-Peters, and Karl Ferdinand Werner.49 Eugenio Corsini, Fabrizio Fabbrini, Antonio Polichetti, and Antonio Marchetta all produced lengthy volumes in Italian from the late 1960s to the 1990s.50 Most prominent in Spanish scholarship is Casimiro Torres Rodríguez’s Paulo Orosio: su vida y sus obras (1985), and Pedro Martínez Cavero’s El pensamiento histórico y antropológico de Orosio (2002). Benoît Lacroix’s Orose et ses idées (1965) is signifcant in French-language scholarship, as is François Paschoud’s work on Orosius within his Roma aeterna, but Yves Janvier’s exploration of Orosius’s geography from 1982 is rarely cited.51 Book-length studies aside, the second half of the twentieth century has seen smaller but still signifcant pockets of work on Orosius, beginning with T. E. Mommsen’s important articles, published in the 1950s.52 Alfred Hiatt, Andy Merrills, Natalia Lozovsky, and Mark Humphries have focused on the geographical aspects of the Historiae, while isolated but similarly brilliant are Susan Wessel’s analysis of the Historiae within her monograph on Leo the Great, and J. G. A. Pocock’s comparative analysis of Orosius and Augustine in the third volume of his work on the reception of Gibbon.53 Neil McLynn, Arnaldo Marcone, Marco Formisano, and Mischa Meier have written on the solidly Orosian topic of the sack of Rome, while Maijastina Kahlos, Andreas Mehl, Matthew Kempshall, and Marco Formisano have responded to the draw of critical attention towards historiography.54 Other Orosian scholarship has splintered away from the ffth century to

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Introduction

examine the Historiae as a reception project of Roman history, and most recently light has been shined on the infuence of Orosius in the reception of Carolingian historiography.55 Comparative studies have also returned to Orosius’s near contemporaries, with Anke Walter’s aetiological work on Orosius and Prudentius. Within the renewed energy of Orosian studies, recent scholarship has moved some way towards a rehabilitation of Orosius and the Historiae. Lacroix describes Orosius as a pioneer of the philosophy of the history of the west in the ffth century, while Croke understands that Orosius is ‘no longer seen as a desperate compiler but as a clear-minded and skilful scholar who extended the achievement of Eusebius by connecting the Romans into Christianity and wider history’.56 Rather than periods of latency interrupted by renaissances with each scholarly generation, criticism on Orosius and the Historiae has been in perpetual motion, with a particular positivist refocusing of attention in recent decades. It is also the case that how you see the Historiae depends on where you look from. Orosius’s text functions as a historiographical hinge; viewed backwards from the composition of the text around 417 CE, the Historiae may be seen as an unhappy amalgamation of classical traditions into a new Christian philosophy of history. Richard Burgess cuttingly dismisses Orosius as ‘a tendentious hack who tried to shoe-horn world and especially Roman history into a pre-conceived theological interpretation’.57 But to look forward from the early ffth century to the proceeding centuries shifts the focus considerably. Karl Leyser identifes Orosius as the foremost of the three pillars of wisdom (with Augustine and Isidore), shaping European identity in the transmission of a shared past from antiquity into the early and high Middle Ages.58 Merrills argues that alongside Holy Scripture, Orosius should be regarded as a cornerstone of medieval Christian historiography.59 Orosius’s place among the sancti patres is attested quite literally in the seventh century by Braulio, Bishop of Zaragossa, who referred to him as sanctus, holy or saintly.60 As Graeme Ward has highlighted, a codex of the Historiae dating from the mid-eighth century produced in Laon is prefaced by Gennadius’s biography of Orosius formatted in the shape of a cross and headed with sanctus Orosius, an addition not found in Gennadius.61 This has led scholars to the conclusion, not unreasonably, that Orosius was venerated in Spain.62 The reception of Orosius and the Historiae is therefore not linear, and is marked by complexity and contention. The subjectivity that determines how Orosius and the text are valued, what the purpose of the text is deemed to be, and how it is categorized within or without genres is intimately connected to conclusions about how well Orosius and the text succeed in their objectives. This present work, which began in 2009 in its frst incarnation as a doctoral thesis, builds on the wave of renewed energy the feld of Orosian studies is currently experiencing. This work is not a comprehensive study of the ffth-century author, or even of the Historiae. Instead, it takes a historiographical approach to the text, asking what the Historiae is, what it does,

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and what it means. These questions provide the framework of the book in three sections. The frst part contains two chapters, on Orosius as a writer of history, and the construction of time in the Historiae. The second part contains one chapter on Christian monotheism and imperial authority, focusing on the construction of the emperor Augustus. The third part contains two chapters, on the apologetical function of war and the sack of Rome. The objective of the book is to scrape the surface enough to reveal the Historiae as the cultural output of a crystallized moment, written by an individual author with an ambitious vision, at a discrete historical time, within the tangle of debts, allegiances, and compromises that accompany a particular intellectual milieu, and with particular authorial motivations for picking up a stylus. This study argues that the Historiae is framed as a response to allegations that Christianity, at the expense of traditional pagan worship, had brought about the fall of Rome. Prompted by the request of Augustine and dedicated to the shadowy fgure of Julian of Carthage, under the blade of necessity, Orosius developed a practical rather than a theological philosophy of history, cataloguing the calamities of the pagan past to prove that human suffering was much worse in pre-Christian times than the present. His objective was to demonstrate that from the Creation, human sin and wilful ignorance of the Scriptures were responsible for disaster, just punishments from God for recalcitrance in acknowledging the truth of His existence. The Orosian philosophy of history was ultimately intended to vindicate Christianity, especially from recent history by demonstrating that the Roman world had not declined but had improved since the appearance of Christ, and was set on a course of constant improvement. But the Historiae ultimately achieved much more than a localized defence of Christianity; it provided a new frame for world history by synchronizing classical times past with the Christian present, underpinned by the construct of a universal community and the eternal reality of God. Orosius brought a unique perspective to the unimproved past, the opposite approach to that of those who glorifed former empires. The Orosian vision of history is the ultimate grand narrative: macro and universal, related through empires and rulers, with the world created and governed by the omniscient Christian God who is wrathful and merciful in equal measure, but who, most signifcantly, is the author of all human experience. This scheme, that foregrounds the intervention of divine providence in human affairs, arguably initiated the dialogue of Christian historicism: Orosius’s ideal of a Holy Roman empire, both Christian and universal, was handed down to Byzantine and medieval Europe, with great historical consequence.63 Perhaps more than any other late antique text, the Historiae carries the objective of pseudomorphosis, where innovation occurs within the semblance of tradition, to its greatest extent. Orosius’s blend of radical conservativism with historical revisionism challenged long-established cultural receptions of the past. At the same time, existing power structures were reinforced,

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and political authority was melded to an orthodox version of Christianity, providing credible and replicable world-building for later thinkers. And yet, paradoxically, the distinctive contribution offered by the text is the reason why modernity is keen to forget it.

Notes 1 Adrienne Rich, ‘Diving into the Wreck’, Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 (London: W. W. Norton, 1973), 23. 2 Jerome, Commentariorum in Danielem. Jerome underlines divine providence as governing the fate of all empires, including Rome. Ipse mutat tempora et aetates, transfert regna atque constituit [Dan. 2.21]. Non ergo miremur siquando cernimus et regibus reges et regnis regna succedere quae Dei gubernantur et mutantur et fniuntur arbitrio. 3 For the Historiae as occupying its own or a new genre, see Gerhard Wirth, Der Weg in die Vergessenheit: zum Schicksal des antiken Alexanderbildes (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993), 67n221; Hans-Werner Goetz, Die Geschichtstheologie des Orosius, Impulse der Forschung 32 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 13; Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Gott, Herrscher und Historiograph: der Geschichtsschreiber als Interpret des Wirkens Gottes in der Welt und Ratgeber der Könige (4. bis 12. Jahrhundert)’, in Deus qui mutat tempora: Menschen und Institutionen im Wandel des Mittelalters, ed. by Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Hubertus Siebert, and Franz Staab (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), understands that Orosius initiated a uniquely Christian sub-genre of historiography that described the history of creation from its beginning, and showed the judgements of God at work in the world. 4 Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, Orose: Histoires (Contre les Païens) (Paris: Budé, 1990), 1:lxvii; lxx. See also D. J. A. Ross, ‘Illustrated Manuscripts of Orosius’, Scriptorium 9 (1955): 35–6; Janet M. Bately and D. J. A. Ross, ‘A Check List of Manuscripts of Orosius’ “Historiarum adversum paganos libri septem”’, Scriptorium 25 (1961): 329–34; Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories in the Middle Ages: A List of Orosius, Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus, and Landolfus Sagax Manuscripts’, Filologia Mediolatina 6–7 (1999–2000): 101–200. The oldest surviving manuscript of the Historiae is the Codex Laurentianus Plut. 65.138, produced, as the colophon tells us, ‘in the workshop [statio] of Viliaric the scribe’. The manuscript is held in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. A digitized version is available here: http://mss.bmlonline.it/s.aspx?Id=AWOIt49YI1A4r7GxMMXB&c=Paulli%20Orosii%20Hist#/oro/34, last accessed 3 June 2021. 5 See Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400-1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 78–81. See further Fabrizio Fabbrini, Paolo Orosio: uno storico (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1979), 9–46; Graeme Ward, ‘All Roads Lead to Rome? Frechulf of Lisieux, Augustine and Orosius’, Early Medieval Europe 22, no. 4 (2014): 492–505; History, Scripture and Authority in the Carolingian Empire: Frechulf of Lisieux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021/2); Goetz, Die Geschichtstheologie, 148–65; Yann Coz,

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7

8 9 10 11

12

13

14 15

11

‘Quelques interprétations des “Historiae aduersus paganos” d’Orose au IXème siècle’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 17 (2007): 286–99; Jocelyn Hillgarth, ‘The Historiae of Orosius in the Early Middle Ages’, De Tertullien aux Mozarabes II: antiquité tardive et Christianisme ancien (VIe-IXe siècles). Mélanges offerts à Jacques Fontaine (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1992), 157–70; Benoît Lacroix, Orose et ses idées (Paris: Librairie philosophique, 1965), 207–10. See Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:vii. Reference to Orosius appears in the De promissionibus et praedictionibus Dei (also known as the Liber promissionum et praedicatorum Dei). The attribution of this text is contested between Prosper of Aquitaine and Quodvultdeus of Carthage, both of whom were contemporaries of Orosius. See Quodvultdeus, Liber promissionum et praedicatorum Dei, prom. 3, 34, 36 (CCSL 60, 179). In addition, Gennadius of Marseilles’s mention of Orosius in his De viris illustribus dates from the ffth century. Gelasius, 4: Item Orosium virum eruditissimum collaudamus quia valde nobis necessariam adversus paganorum calumnias dignam ordinavit historiam miraque brevitate contexuit... See Mirella Ferrari, ‘Mira brevitate: Orosio e il Decretum Gelasianum’, in Roma, magistra mundi: itineraria culturae medievalis. Mélanges offerts au Père L. E. Boyle à l’occasion de son 75e anniversaire, ed. by Jacqueline Hamesse (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 225–31. William J. Connell, ‘The Eternity of the World and Renaissance Historical Thought’, California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2011): 8. Gennadius, De viri inlustribus: Orosius presbyter, Hispanus genere, vir eloquens et historiarum cognitor... See Leslie George Whitbread, Fulgentius the Mythographer (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971). Samuel Lieu and Dominic Monserrat suggest the interpolation of Orosius’s work into the Origo Constantini as taking place directly following the completion of the Historiae around 417. Samuel N. C. Lieu and Dominic Montserrat, From Constantine to Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views. A Source History (London: Routledge, 1996), 40. See further T. D. Barnes, ‘Jerome and the Origo Constantini imperatoris’, Phoenix 43, no. 2 (1989): 158–61. Otto and Orosius: J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 98–114 (at 103): ‘Otto is a direct heir of Orosius, in the sense that he fnds to his purposes meanings intended by the latter seven centuries before... To the extent that Orosius wrote a history of empire, Otto is required to enlarge it; and the extent to which Orosius wrote a history of the two cities is complicated by the emergence of the Church as an actor in imperial history.’ See A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2005), 35–99. See also Benedetto Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografa (Bari: Laterza, 1917), 199, who centralizes Augustine, Orosius, and Otto within medieval historiography. Charles Russell Stone, The Roman de toute chevalerie: Reading Alexander Romance in Late Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), 35–49. See Gennadius, De viri inlustribus: Orosius presbyter, Hispanus genere, vir eloquens et historiarum cognitor... The Hereford mappa mundi is inscribed on the lower right corner, just above the fgure on horseback: Descripcio Orosii de ornesta mundi sicut interius ostenditur (‘Orosius’s account, De ornesta mundi, as shown within’). See David Lawton, ‘The Surveying Subject and the “Whole World” of Belief: Three Case Studies’, in New Medieval Literatures, vol. 4, ed. by Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 9–22.

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Introduction

16 Edward Gibbon, Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1779), 91. In 1778, Henry Edwards Davis published An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In Which His View of the Progress of the Christian Religion Is Shewn to be Founded on the Misrepresentation of the Authors He Cites and Numerous Instances of His Inaccuracy and Plagiarism Are Produced. Incredibly, Davis’s highly critical work ran to 301 pages, and Gibbon wrote an entire work, the Vindication, in vigorous response. 17 G. W. Bowersock, ‘Gibbon’s Historical Imagination’, The American Scholar 57, no. 1 (1988): 40. 18 J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395 to A.D 565) (London: Macmillan, 1923), 1:306. 19 John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London: Duckworth, 1989), 597; 6. 20 John Matthews, Review of Orose et ses idées, by Benoît Lacroix, Medium aevum 36 (1967): 168. 21 François Paschoud, Rome aeterna: études sur le patriotisme romain dans l’Occident latin à l’époque des Grandes Invasions (Rome: Institut suisse, 1967), 277; 291. 22 R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 161. A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964), 2:1025. 23 Theresa Urbainczyk, Review of Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans, by A. T. Fear, Classics Ireland 18 (2011): 93. 24 Chester G. Starr, ‘Historical and Philosophical Time’, History and Theory 6 (1966): 28. 25 Denys Hay, Annalists and Historians (London: Methuen, 1977), 31. 26 James Harvey Robinson, ‘The Fall of Rome’, in The New History: Essays Illustrating the Modern Historical Outlook (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 165–6. 27 For a broader perspective without discussion of Orosius, see Patrick Baker, ‘Historiography’, in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, ed. by Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 151–66. 28 Connell, ‘Eternity of the World’, 8. 29 ...indignus historici nomine, nonnihil ex Eutropio et Floro collegit, BAV Vat. Lat. 6783, col. 972. See Jean-Louis Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio et les antiquités romaines (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), 46n12, and Riccardo Fubini, Storiografa dell’Umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003), 87. 30 Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI (London: Offcina Nortoniana, 1614), 93. Justus Lipsius, Ad Annales Cornelii Taciti liber, Commentarius, sive Notae (Lyons: Gryphius, 1585). 31 Elizabeth M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c.1000–c.1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 29. 32 For some examples, see apologetic: Markus, Saeculum, 4; Hay, Annalists and Historians, 31; M. L. W. Laistner, ‘Some Refections on Latin Historical Writing in the Fifth Century’, Classical Philology 35, no. 3 (1940): 250; R. J. Deferrari, ‘Introduction’, in Paulus Orosius: The Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1964), xx. Theology: Markus, Saeculum, 162. Rhetoric: Peter Clemoes, Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 129. Polemic: T. D. Barnes, ‘The Fragments of Tacitus’ Histories’, Classical Philology 72, no. 3 (1977): 229. Chronology: Ann Christys, Christians in al-Andalus (711-1000) (Richmond,

Introduction

33

34

35

36 37 38

13

Surrey: Curzon, 2002), 135. Epitome: J. W. Burrow, A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 195; A. J. Collins, Review of The Tollemache Orosius, ed. by Alistair Campbell, The British Museum Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1954): 71. Textbook: Matthews, Review of Orose, 168; Brian Croke, Alanna M. Emmett, ‘Historiography in Late Antiquity: An Overview’, in History and Historians in Late Antiquity, ed. by Brian Croke and Alanna M. Emmett (New South Wales: Pergamon Press, 1983), 3; Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:xlv. For further discussion of the Historiae as a pedagogical tool, see Victoria Leonard and Jamie Wood, ‘History-writing and Education in Late Antique and Early Medieval Spain’, in Historiographies of Identity II: Post-Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Gerda Heydemann and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 237–67, and Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Uses of Classical History and Medieval Geography in St Gall’, in Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond 300-1600, ed. by Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 65–83. History: Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31–2; Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 80–1; Brenda Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence: A History. The Bible, Virgil, Orosius, Augustine, and Dante (New York: Continuum, 2012), 17. World history: Croke and Emmett, ‘Historiography in Late Antiquity’, 3. Church history: Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 105. Universal history: Bury, Later Roman Empire, 306; A. T. Fear, Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 182; J. M. Alonso-Núñez, ‘Die Universalgeschichtsschreibung in der Spätantike und die westgotische Historiographie’, in Zwischen Historiographie und Hagiographie: ausgewählte Beiträge zur Erforschung der Spätantike, ed. by Jürgen Dummer and Meinolf Vielberg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 25; R. A. Markus, Review of Orose: Histoires (Contre Les Païens), ed. by Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, The Classical Review 41, no. 2 (1991): 492; Henri-Irénée Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin, Orose et l’Augustinisme historique’, in La storiografa altomedievale, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 17, vol. 1 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1970), 76. Christian history: A. T. Fear, ‘Orosius and Escaping from the Dance of Doom’, in Historiae Mundi: Studies in Universal History, ed. by Peter Liddel and A. T. Fear (London: Duckworth, 2010), 7–8; Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 164; Michael Whitby, ‘Imperial Christian Historiography’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 363; Goetz, Die Geschichtestheologie, 12. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 164. The creation of new genres in late antiquity is briefy contextualized by André Basson, ‘A Transformation of Genres in Late Latin Literature: Classical Literary Tradition and Ascetic Ideals in Paulinus of Nola’, Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. by Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith S. Sivan (Ashgate: Variorum, 1996), 276. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 2. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:vii–viii. The critical determination to foreground Augustine and his infuence above other thinkers is demonstrated by Gerald Bonner’s conclusion that ‘ordinary medieval theology...preferred a political Augustinianism which completely misunderstood Augustine’s theology’. An alternative conclusion would be that the infuence of Augustine is absent here. Gerald Bonner, Review of Les Romains chrétiens face à l’histoire de Rome: histoire, christianisme et romanités en

14 Introduction

39 40

41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49

50

51 52

Occident dans l’Antiquité tardive (IIIe-Ve siècles), by Hervé Inglebert, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49, no. 1 (1998): 151. W. H. C. Frend, ‘Augustine and Orosius on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West’, Augustinian Studies 20 (1989): 3. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 80–1; R. A. Markus, ‘The Roman Empire in Early Christian Historiography’, Downside Review 81 (1963): 352. By contrast, Marrou argues that it was principally through Orosius and Isidore of Seville that Augustine was ‘a particularly effective agent for the transmission of history from antiquity into the middle ages’. Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 62. Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 83. Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 79–80. For a comparative analysis of Orosius and Augustine, see Paul A. Onica, ‘Orosius’ (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1987); T. E. Mommsen, ‘Orosius and Augustine’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by E. F. Rice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959b), 325–49; Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 59–87. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 1. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose. Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence, 1. Adolf Lippold, Le Storie contro i pagani (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1976), 1:xlvii. Eustaquio Sánchez Salor, Historias, 2 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 1982); Paolo Farmhouse Alberto and Rodrigo Furtado, História apologética: o livro 7 das histórias contra os pagãos e outros excertos (Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2000); Angeles Romero Cambrón and Ignacio J. García Pinilla, Historias contra los paganos: versión aragonesa patrocinada por Juan Hernández De Heredia (Spain: Larumbe Textos Aragoneses, 2008); Mayte Penelas, Kitāb Hurūšiyūš: traducción árabe de las ‘Historiae adversus paganos’ de Orosio (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científcas, Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 2001); Malcolm R. Godden, The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). For a synthetic analysis of the Latin Historiae and the Old English Orosius, see Elizabeth M. Tyler, ‘Writing Universal History in Eleventh-Century England: Cotton Tiberius B. I, German Imperial History-writing and Vernacular Lay Literacy’, in Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages, ed. by Michele Campopiano and Henry Bainton (York: York University Press, 2017), 66–8. Goetz, Die Geschichtestheologie; ‘Orosius und die Barbaren: zu den umstrittenen Vorstellungen eines spätantiken Geschichtstheologen’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 29, no. 3 (1980): 356–76. Reinhart Herzog, ‘Orosius oder Die Formulierung eines Fortschrittskonzepts aus der Erfahrung des Niedergangs’, in Niedergang: Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema, ed. by Reinhart Koselleck and Paul Widmer (Stuttgart: 1980), 79–102. Dorothea Koch-Peters, Ansichten des Orosius zur Geschichte seiner Zeit (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1984). Werner, ‘Gott, Herrscher und Historiograph’. Eugenio Corsini, Introduzione alle ‘Storie’ di Orosio (Turin: University of Turin, 1968); Fabrizio Fabbrini, Paolo Orosio: uno storico (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1979); Antonio Polichetti, Le ‘Historiae’ di Orosio e la tradizione imperiale nella ‘Storiografa ecclesiastica’ occidentale (311-417 d.c.) (Naples: Edizioni scientifche italiane, 1999); Antonio Marchetta, Orosio e Ataulfo nell’ideologia dei rapporti romano-barbarici (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1987). Paschoud, Roma aeterna; Yves Janvier, La Géographie d’Orose (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres, 1982). Mommsen, ‘Orosius and Augustine’; ‘Aponius and Orosius on the Signifcance of the Epiphany’, in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by E. F. Rice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959), 299–325.

Introduction

15

53 Alfred Hiatt, ‘Mapping the Ends of Empire’, in Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 48–77; Merrills, History and Geography; Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Earth Is Our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Mark Humphries, ‘A New Created World: Classical Geographical Texts and Christian Contexts in Late Antiquity’, in Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2007), 33–67; Susan Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. 54 See contributions in Johannes Lipps, Carlos Machado, and Phillipp von Rummel (eds), The Sack of Rome in 410 AD: The Event, Its Context and Its Impact. Palilia 28 (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013); Maijastina Kahlos, ‘Seizing the History: Christianizing the Past in Late Antique Historiography’, in Past and Present in Medieval Chronicles, ed. by Mari Isoaho, Collegium 17 (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2015), 11–33, and ‘Orosius, Barbarians, and the Christian Success Story’, in Writing History in Late Antique Iberia: Historiographical Praxis in Hispania from the 4th to the 7th Century, ed. by Purifcación Ubric Rabaneda (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming), 1–19; Andreas Mehl, Roman Historiography: An Introduction to Its Basic Aspects and Development, trans. by Hans-Friedrich Mueller (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 229–37; Kempshall, Rhetoric, 64–79; Marco Formisano, ‘Grand Finale: Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos or the Subversion of History’, in Der Fall Roms und seine Widerauferstehungen in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. by Karla Pollmann and Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 153–76. 55 See, for example, Mattias Gassman, ‘The Roman Kings in Orosius’ Historiae adversvm paganos’, The Classical Quarterly 67, no. 2 (2017): 617–30; Graeme Ward, ‘All Roads Lead to Rome? Frechulf of Lisieux, Augustine and Orosius’, Early Medieval Europe 22, no. 4 (2014): 492–505; Ward, History, Scripture and Authority; Natalia Lozovsky, ‘Roman Geography and Ethnography in the Carolingian Empire’, Speculum 81, no. 2 (2006): 325–64; Rosamund McKitterick and Robert Evans, ‘A Carolingian Epitome of Orosius from Tours: Leiden VLQ 20’, in Historiography and Identity III: Carolingian Approaches, ed. by Ross Kramer, Helmut Reimitz, and Graeme Ward (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021): 123–53; Coz, ‘Quelques interprétations’, 286–99. 56 Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 189; Brian Croke and Alanna M. Emmett, ‘Late Antique Historiography, 250–650 CE’, in A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, ed. by John Marincola (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 2:575. 57 Richard W. Burgess, Review of Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century A.D., ed. by Gabriele Marasco, Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2004), http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-03-49.html, last accessed 4 November 2021. Burgess is incredulous at the signifcance Giuseppe Zecchini (‘Latin Historiography: Jerome, Orosius and the Western Chronicles’, 317–49) attributes to Orosius and the Historiae. 58 Karl Leyser, ‘Concepts of Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages’, Past and Present 137 (1992): 26. 59 Merrills, History and Geography, 35. 60 Braulio, Epistula 44, ad Fructuosum. 61 Laon, BM 137, 4v-5r; Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jean. Ward, History, Scripture and Authority; Felice Lifshitz, Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 154.

16

Introduction

62 Ann Freeman, ‘Theodulf of Orleans: A Visigoth at Charlemagne’s Court’, L’Europe héritière de l’Espagne wisigothique, ed. by Jacques Fontaine and Christine Pellistrandi (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1992), 186. 63 Glenn F. Chesnut, The First Christian Histories (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1986), 257. Without explicit articulation of the term, Orosius anticipated the concept of Christendom in his construct of a Christian commonwealth and a sustained emphasis on the Christiana tempora. It seems that the translator of the Old English Historiae drew a similar conclusion, as what is likely to be the very earliest reference to the term is found in the translation made around 900 CE (2.4): ‘Ac heo for hiere cristendome nugiet is gescild’ (Alfred, trans. by Godden, 118).

1

Orosius as a writer of history

Introduction The Historiae has been in existence for over 1,600 years, and, discounting more recent negative appraisals, the text has enjoyed an astonishing reach and readership over the centuries. And yet fundamental questions about its purpose, the authorial intention behind it, and how we can locate the text remain unresolved. Orosius’s Historiae is a work that defes categorization, and generic misplacement has generated variance, divergence, and opprobrium within its critical reception. As discussed in the Introduction, the privileging of history as an exclusive genre with particular standards that the Historiae does not meet has resulted in its relegation.1 The multiplicity of the text has seen it categorized not as a work of history, but variously as a chronicle, epitome, polemic, apologia, breviarium, theology, protology, and as a textbook.2 In the Prologue, Orosius establishes differing allegiances, methodologies, and objectives alongside one another, determining the text as anything but one-dimensional. In turn, the work has been recognized as in need of constant revision.3 This chapter argues that the slippery nature of the Historiae precipitated its controversial and contested critical interpretations across its reception history. In order to understand better the polarization in the modern, medieval, and ancient receptions of the Historiae, this chapter returns to frst principles, asking: what is the text? What did Orosius think he was doing in writing the Historiae, how did he categorize it, and how did he communicate his understanding of his task to his audience? How did Orosius situate the text within an existing ancient historiographical tradition? And why are these questions not only diffcult to answer but also still relevant? The chapter begins by examining the relationship of the Historiae to historiography, and its categorization within alternative genres, including as a breviarium. Orosius’s claims to stylistic brevity as well as his technical dating are investigated, as is how the Historiae aligns with and deviates from Eutropius’s Breviarium of Roman history. The focus expands to consider how the purpose of the text was determined by the audience it was written for and the opponent it was written against. Finally, the chapter turns to the

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599120-2

18

Orosius as a writer of history

construction of the narrative voice, how it positions authorial motivations and methodologies, and how performative self-elevation orientates Orosius as a Christian authority.

What is the Historiae? The Historiae is a text that deliberately leaves the reader unmoored, with no reference to the author given by name, and no programmatic statement that communicates how the text should be understood. It is diffcult, therefore, to unearth the original intention of the author, which Quentin Skinner argues is crucial in understanding a text.4 Instead, indications of authorial purpose can be discerned from the self-refexive language the text uses to describe itself. Although critical voices have claimed that Orosius referred to his work as a history, seeming care has been taken to avoid designating the text as such, at least where the reader could most expect to fnd such occurrence, like the Prologue.5 The narrative voice describes the Historiae in neutral categories, as opus, ‘a work’ (Prologue 8, 1:7), volumen, ‘a book, roll’ (Prologue 10, 1:8), and opera, ‘work’ (Prologue 13, 1:9). It is deliberately referred to in ways that set it apart from the genre of history writing. Orosius does not locate his work within a tradition of Roman historical writing, nor does he present the text within a framework of Christian historiography or early Christian chroniclers such as Hippolytus, Julius Africanus, Eusebius, or Sulpicius Severus. Nevertheless, the preoccupation of the text with representations of the past makes it contingent upon history writing. As instructed by Augustine, Orosius’s research methodology centred on histories and annals (historiarum atque annalium): ‘accordingly you bade me set forth from all the records available of histories and annals whatever instances I have found from the past…’ (Prologue 10, 1:4).6 The Prologue is then concerned to establish previous historical writing as doing one thing, and the Historiae as doing something quite different. Orosius centres his argument around the choice to begin other works of history not with Creation but with the reign of Ninus, king of the Assyrians: ‘Since nearly all men interested in writing, among the Greeks as among the Latins, who have perpetuated in words the accomplishments of kings and peoples for a lasting record, have made the beginnings of their writing with Ninus…’ (1.1.1, 1:5).7 Orosius’s pejorative point is that by starting with Ninus, previous writers have carelessly disregarded over 3,000 years of history, which ‘either have been omitted or unknown by all historians’ (1.1.5, 1:6).8 The dismissal of writers in the period between Ninus and Christ, over 2,000 years, completes the polemical attack: ‘2015 years have passed, in which between the performers and the writers the fruit of labours and occupations of all were wasted’ (1.1.6, 1:6).9 And it allows Orosius to turn instead to the Old Testament, which does begin at the beginning of time and foreshadows future events:

Orosius as a writer of history

19

Therefore, the subject itself demands that I touch upon briefy a few accounts from these books which, when speaking of the origin of the world, have lent credence to past events by the prediction of the future and the proof of subsequent happenings. (1.1.7, 1:6)10 Christian scripture is set apart as a knowledge resource for the past as well as the future, and the Old Testament, especially the Book of Genesis, is presented as more accurate for dating history than earlier pagan histories.11 Orosius uses the Prologue to establish an opposition between earlier writers of history on the one hand, and the Historiae, informed by Scripture, on the other. This aligns the Historiae with a more ancient and reliable tradition; beginning with Creation, the Old Testament predates other works of history by thousands of years. Orosius does not claim explicitly to be writing better history; in fact, in the Prologue, he does not claim to be writing history at all. Like Olympiodorus of Thebes, who wrote that his twenty-two books were not a history (συγγραφή) but a collection of materials for a history (ὕλη συγγραφῆς), Orosius instead offers a Christian reconception of history that corrects mistaken versions of the past.12 Designations of the text as a history are employed cautiously, but while a preference is shown towards more neutral descriptors, it is not an absence that is altogether sustained. There are three self-references to the work as ‘history’: These matters will now be set forth by me more fully, unfolding my history orderly (2.3.10, 1:47);13 At the same time, then, Cyrus, king of the Persians, whom I have mentioned above in the unfolding of my history… (2.6.1, 1:52);14 I have woven together an inextricable wicker-work of confused history… (3.2.9, 1:83).15 The paucity of references to the text as a history refects Orosius’s desire to differentiate his work from those of earlier pagan historians and his self-conscious awareness that his Historiae moves in a new direction. Orosius is similarly cautious in his reluctance to identify specifcally pagan historians (gentiles historici), directing his apologetic in the broadest of terms (1.3.6, 1:43). The oppositional tension between Orosius as a more trustworthy Christian author and pagan writers who are false and unreliable is sustained throughout the work: ‘but we have already spoken somewhat about the different opinions of disagreeing [pagan] historians, and let it suffce that these have been detected and that what is falsely known is the knowledge of lies’ (5.3.4, 2:78).16 Orosius’s approach to genre is apologetical. The text is simultaneously contextualized within but excluded from the genre of history in its revision of the past from a Christian perspective.

20

Orosius as a writer of history

Genre and brevity If the Historiae is not, comfortably or at least traditionally, a history, then what is it? The presentation of the Historiae is determined not only by Orosius’s self-conception of the work, which has been explored in the opening section of the chapter; with each reception, the text is reframed and re-presented, and made contingent upon other textual outputs through generic categorization. Various allegiances are evident, including elements of epitome, breviarium, chronicle, and classical history, leaving the issue of genre open to critical renegotiation. Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet describes the Historiae as ‘a sort of breviarium’ of the misfortunes of the world since its origin.17 This conforms to Benoît Lacroix’s interpretation: ‘De cette conscience qu’il faut au public moins cultivé des récits courts et directs, plutôt que des théories, est née l’Historia adversus Paganos. Orose est invité à écrire pour le peuple et dans le sens de Justin et d’Eutrope.’18 As Lacroix argues, Orosius wrote in a direct style, avoiding theorizing and following the example of Eutropius and Justin. This determines how the text should be understood, that it was not simply apologetic or history but had a wider purpose, rewriting secular and political history from a Christian perspective and in competition with Roman breviaria. Similarly, Arnaldo Momigliano situates the Historiae in a Christian chronographic tradition alongside the Chronica urbis Romae and Sulpicius Severus’s Chronica. For Momigliano, Orosius gives ‘the fnal Christian twist to the pagan epitome of Roman history’.19 Understanding the Historiae as an epitome or breviarium responds to the condensed nature of the text, universal in scope, but epitomizing in style, offering a compressed history of the world since Creation but contained within one volume. Less in the detail of derivation and more in stylistic allegiances, the Historiae can be located as an epitome or breviarium in comparison with the earlier Roman breviaria of Festus and Eutropius.20 Just as the declared aim of epitomes and breviaria is extreme brevity, with decorative features of the original such as speeches, digressions, or lengthy passages of text omitted, so the same is true for the Historiae.21 Brevity is positioned as a constant source of anxiety for the authorial voice in the text, often preoccupying the moments of rhetorical self-refection that intersperse the text. Peter Van Nuffelen interprets Orosius’s references to the brevity of the text as ‘statements of imperfection’, signalling to the reader that the detail of suffering from the past is not comprehensive and is therefore inadequate.22 The methodological objective to be brief is established in the Prologue, where an ordered and concise exposition of the material is part of Augustine’s instruction to Orosius on composing the text: ‘…and unfold them systematically and briefy in the context of this book’ (Prologue 10, 1:4).23 Van Nuffelen observes that the instruction situates the work ‘in the tradition of writing brevitas rather than that of full-scale historiography’.24 The intended brevity of the text is then addressed twice in quick succession at the opening of the work.

Orosius as a writer of history

21

Orosius promises to trace the wretchedness of man from the beginning of man’s sin, ‘touching on only a few examples and these briefy’ (1.1.4, 1:6).25 He proposes to unfold his narrative, giving a brief account, to demonstrate that earlier times endured similar miseries to the present (1.1.13, 1:12). The universal description of the world known to Orosius that opens the work is concluded with the statement: ‘I have, as briefy as possible, completed a survey of the provinces and islands of the whole world’ (1.2.106, 1:20).26 Most frequently, the elision necessary to achieve brevity is itself unremarked upon and passes unnoticed, but Orosius does recognize sporadic instances: ‘Furthermore, everywhere among many people a great many wars with quite different results were waged which, for the sake of brevity, I have passed over’ (4.20.40, 2:167).27 While brevity is an explicit authorial objective, in practice it functions implicitly as a less tangible aspect of composition, as that which is omitted is necessarily not evident. Orosius faces a conundrum as an author writing in universal proportions but with a remit to be brief. In the Preface to Book 3, Orosius reveals his deliberate method to unfold the story of past conficts, but he admits that it is not possible to replicate events entirely and exactly: …I take up again the story of the conficts of past ages; neither can all things be unfolded nor through all things that were accomplished and just as they were accomplished, because important and innumerable matters were described by a great many writers at very great length. (3 Preface 1, 1:77)28 The narrative of history is too great and the number of authors writing about it is too many for Orosius to give a comprehensive account. Orosius is faced with a ‘knotty problem’ (3 Preface 2, 1:77; sollicitudo nodosior): omission of events in a desire for brevity risks misrepresenting history, but inclusion of all events without description could make the narrative obscure.29 This is, as Orosius states, his greatest concern, to ‘set forth the essence of things’ and not just their description (3 Preface 3, 1:77).30 He eventually decides that brevity is always obscure (obscura brevitas), as it gives the appearance of understanding but takes away complete coverage.31 Orosius resolves both to narrate fully the essence of history and confne his narrative in order that ‘in some way one may be tempered by the other, if much seems not to be omitted and events seem not to be greatly compressed’ (3 Preface 3, 1:77).32 Orosius’s objective to be brief has been interpreted as a failed venture. Van Nuffelen understands that the Preface to Book 3 is ‘a rhetorically informed admission of failure’, as the resulting text is ‘far from brief, and shares few characteristics with the extant breviaria of the fourth century – except that Orosius used them as sources’.33 It is diffcult to contend that the Historiae achieves its aim of brevity when, in its most recent edition, the Historiae occupies three volumes.34 But the scope of the work temporally and spatially is much greater than that of a breviarium like Eutropius’s, which is limited only

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to Roman history from the foundation of the City to 364 CE. By contrast, Orosius begins with the Creation and ends around 417 CE, and includes a universal description of the world. The geography is as wide-ranging as the narration of events, covering the Assyrian empire, the Amazons, the Trojan war, the Median empire, the Athenian empire, the Roman empire, the Peloponnesian war, the rule of Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great, Carthage and its fall, Caesar’s Gallic wars, the rise of Augustus, and the continued history of Rome to Orosius’s own day told through the rulership of emperors. In a comparison with the seventy pages of H. W. Bird’s translation of Eutropius, which occupies much less history and geography, the Historiae achieves a form of brevity relative to its scope.35 The critical dismissal of contingency between the Historiae and fourth-century breviaria is founded on the understanding that traditional breviaria only pretend to be comprehensive: ‘they do not contain all events, but give a complete picture in the sense that the reader will know all he needs to’.36 The fundamental detail here is the ‘pretence’ of comprehensiveness by breviaria. Van Nuffelen cites the prefaces of both Festus and Eutropius as establishing this comprehensiveness, but neither actually do. They do not indicate where events have been elided or shortened, in contrast with the Historiae. Nowhere in either text are there interjections in the frst person that justify the compression of the narrative. Van Nuffelen argues that …in rhetorical theory brevity does not mean truncation: a brief account still is a full account, reduced to its essentials. Orosius, on the contrary, is at pains to emphasize his own incompleteness, as a rhetorical suggestion that he has even more proof of the misery of the past than he actually offers to the reader.37 The notion that epitomes can be inclusive without truncation is only theoretical. While breviaria typically do not acknowledge specifc moments of their omissions, Orosius’s rhetorical interjections draw attention to them and upset the sense of a large story told smoothly and swiftly. There are other ways in which the Historiae conforms to the stylistic example of breviaria. The text blends descriptive passages impassively, conveying the material of history with lengthier sections of rhetorical commentary that return the reader to Orosius’s apologetic agenda.38 Each of the seven books opens with a preface written in the frst person, often with a concentration of theological and polemical statements, which frames how the reader receives the forthcoming chapter. At the end of the chapter comes a further rhetorical statement that makes the argument of the section explicit. For instance, Book 2 opens with ‘I think that…’ (2.1.1, 1:44; arbitror) in a discussion of the religious truth of the Christian God as the creator of mankind and the judicial divine punishment of man for sin in the world.39 At the end of Book 2, the argument is summarized with clear evidence to

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demonstrate that the sack of Rome in 410 CE was much less serious than the Gallic sack of the city in the fourth century BCE (2.19.12–16, 1:126–8). The narration of events according to an organized chronology is imitative of a breviarium, but a commentary that reveals the partiality of the author is sustained throughout the historical prose, and longer passages direct the interpretation of events that have been described. Robert Browning argues that Orosius’s apologetic ‘leaves no room for the detached objectivity – real or feigned – of the classical historian’.40 Browning highlights the distinction between Orosius’s historiographical approach and the tradition of classical historiography which he was working from. This juxtaposition between the unadorned narrative and the emotive reaction it generates is exemplifed in Book 3 with the focus on Alexander the Great. The section opens with a frm chronology: ‘So Alexander, in the four hundred and twenty-sixth year after the founding of the City, succeeded Philip on the throne’ (3.16.1, 1:100).41 Orosius relies upon Justin’s Epitome for this material, which he condenses and manipulates.42 The statistic of the size of Alexander’s army is reproduced almost exactly by Orosius from Justin, as is the accompanying comment: In his army, there were thirty-two thousand infantry, four thousand fve hundred cavalry, and one hundred and eighty ships. With so small a force it is uncertain whether Alexander is more to be admired for having conquered the whole world or for having dared to undertake it. (3.16.3, 1:100)43 In a factual style, the text relates the Persian wars against Darius with statistics of the size of armies and the numbers killed, the martial expansion of his empire, and his death. Like Justin’s Epitome and Eutropius’s Breviarium, this is the story of history: a narrative relating important events and celebrated persons in the past, in the main uncomplicated by personal interjection and insight.44 The turn comes following the conclusion of this narrative in the demise of Alexander, when the frst-person narrative voice intervenes: O wicked soul of man and heart always inhuman. Did I not fll my eyes with tears as I reviewed these events to prove the recurring cycles of the misfortunes of all ages, in the relating of so much evil, because of which the whole world on learning of death itself or because of the fear of death trembled? Did I not grieve in my own heart? As I turned these things over in my mind, did I not make the miseries of my ancestors my own, viewing them as the common lot of man? (3.20.5, 1:107)45 The dramatic and grief-stricken reaction to the historical narrative is not the uncontrolled excess of emotions it initially appears to be. Rather, it is an intentional strategy designed to reinforce the ideological point that the

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past has been misunderstood – it was not glorious but miserable – and the Historiae provides a more proportionate and genuine response. The archetypal construction from Book 3 where an exposition of a period of history is followed by a highly emotional and introspective reaction recurs throughout the text. We see it following the narration of Athenian history in Book 2, which ends with the death of Darius (2.14.1–2.18.3). Here, the composition changes to an expressive refection of the ‘masses of misfortunes’ and the ‘slaughter of that time’ (2.18.4, 1:74).46 We see it again in Book 4, where a lengthy commentary bemoaning the lack of Roman peace follows the relation of the frst Punic war (4.7.1–12.9): …in only one year did the Roman viscera not sweat blood, and in the midst of the many periods of long centuries the wretched City, truly a wretched mother, has enjoyed rest scarcely at any time from the fear of sorrows, not to say sorrows themselves. (4.12.9, 2:146)47 These emotional and rhetorical passages are starkly different from the style of Eutropius’s Breviarium. As Bird notes, Eutropius’s manner of composition is deceptively unaffected, and at no point does the text feature personal interjection.48 These emotional reactions are a deliberate strategy to control the sense of the past the reader develops: Orosius not only determines the narrative of the past but also how the reader should respond to it.49 This is history but with a purpose, writing about the material of history as evidence to persuade the reader of the apologetic agenda.50

Genre and dating Both Eutropius and Orosius prioritize a consistent and fully calculated chronological system in their works. Orosius consciously imitates Eutropius in dating ab urbe condita (‘from the foundation of the City’), aligning the Historiae within the genre of breviaria. The objective of the Breviarium, to establish a ‘brief narrative in chronological sequence’, is set out in the short Preface.51 Eutropius operates a strict and practical chronology, using a variety of different methods in order to situate events within the linear progression of time, calculating from the time of the Roman kings, ab urbe condita, the consular years, and the monthly calendar.52 Dating according to the rule of the consuls and ab urbe condita, often in conjunction, is most frequent: ‘In the consulship of Marcus Portius Cato and Quintus Marcius Rex, in the six hundred and thirty-third year after the founding of the city…’53 The sustained concentration on dating provides a visible framework to the work, enabling the relation of clear and unbroken narrative history. Eutropius’s Breviarium has been interpreted as a work that was written above all to be useful; as Bird argued, the text was intended to provide ‘a simple, succinct and readable account’ for Valens and his military commanders

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(‘uneducated provincials from the Danube region or Germans, with little knowledge of Roman history’) and newly initiated senators at Constantinople.54 The clipped and neutral style of Eutropius’s Breviarium, lacking in description and moving swiftly between factual events, gives a strong sense that the work was designed to convey as much information about the narrative of history as succinctly as possible. A clear chronology was indispensable in performing this task. Similarly, a sound chronological framework was essential for the Historiae. While the intention for the text to be used as a pedagogical tool was perhaps less embedded in his authorial motivations than Eutropius’s, Orosius’s apologetical objective to write persuasively together with a universal coverage of past time meant that the status of the Historiae as an important educational text developed over the following centuries.55 A concern with chronology characterizes the opening of the Historiae, especially beginning at the correct moment in time (Creation) and setting out the events of history in an orderly manner: ‘…and unfold them systematically and briefy in the context of this book’ (Prologue 10, 1:4).56 This focus on the temporal sequence of events is evident throughout the work: ‘Behold the events and their great number which I have enumerated as having taken place continuously year by year…’ (Prologue 10, 1:4).57 Orosius’s authorial preoccupation often manifests itself in a self-conscious justifcation of the historical method used: ‘I shall interrupt for a little while the calamities of the world during his wars, rather those which followed, in order that I may add in this place, according to the proper sequence of events, the Roman wars’ (3.15.1, 1:98).58 The order of events and the clarity of the text generate anxiety towards the ability to manage the scope of material, whether affected or authentic: I have woven together an inextricable wicker-work of confused history and I have worked in with words the uncertain cycles of war carried on here and there with frantic fury, following the evidence closely, for the more I kept to the order of events, the more, as I see it, I wrote in a disorderly fashion (3.2.9, 1:83).59 Orosius’s evident preoccupation with his historical method is unsurprising given the universal scope of the work temporally and spatially, and the demands of brevity. His response is to impose order by containing the narrative of history within a formal and perpetual system of dating. Moments of correspondence between the Historiae and Eutropius’s Breviarium in terms of dating illustrate the shared concern with chronology and the desire to date according to similar events in a related style, especially according to ab urbe condita.60 Both the Breviarium and the Historiae eschew the mythical founding of Rome by Aeneas in preference for Romulus and Remus, and date the foundation of the City relatively according to multiple

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events. Eutropius dates according to the monthly calendar, the Olympiad system, and the destruction of Troy: …he [Romulus] founded a small city on the Palatine Hill on the 21st April, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, in the three hundred and ninety-fourth year after the destruction of Troy, according to those who give the earliest and latest dates.61 Orosius also dates according to the fall of Troy but arrives at a different calculation, and specifes that the founding of Rome occurred in the ffth year of the sixth Olympiad: In the four hundred and fourteenth year after the overthrow of Troy, moreover in the sixth Olympiad, which precisely in the ffth year, after the intervening four years had been completed, was customarily celebrated in Elis, a city of Greece, the city of Rome was founded in Italy by Romulus and Remus, twin originators. (2.4.1, 1:48)62 Eutropius favours dating according to ab urbe condita and the consular year, an example which Orosius follows: [Eutropius:] Thereafter a war was undertaken against Carthage, in the six hundred and second year after the founding of the city, in the consulship of Lucius Manlius Censorinus and Manius Manilius, the ffty-frst year after the Second Punic War had been concluded.63 [Orosius:] Six hundred and two years after the founding of the City, in the consulship of L. Censorinus and M. Manilius, the Third Punic War broke out. (4.22.1, 2:169)64 These comparisons are not intended to give the impression that Orosius copied Eutropius without question; Orosius’s independence is demonstrated by the frequency with which he calculated dates in opposition to Eutropius’s chronology, and was unafraid to challenge him explicitly: In the eight hundred and forty-sixth year after the founding of the City, although Eutropius wrote that this was the eight hundred and fftieth, Nerva, a very old man, was made the tenth emperor after Augustus by Petronius, the praetorian prefect, and by the eunuch, Parthenius, the murderer of Domitian. (7.11.1, 3:305)65 Orosius’s dating at this point varies from Eutropius’s by four years. He does not include the consulship of Vetus and Valens as Eutropius does, and he specifcally identifes Nerva in the imperial succession as opposed to Eutropius’s more vague assertion that ‘the state returned to a most prosperous condition after being entrusted with great good fortune to virtuous rulers’.66

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Although Orosius has been accused of simply copying from other sources, he does more than transpose Eutropius’s system onto the Historiae.67 The logic, importance, and practicality in dating from the foundation of Rome were appealing in the reconstruction of history from a Christian perspective which situates Rome as the chosen and ultimate world empire. The challenges to Eutropius’s chronology not only indicate Orosius’s independence and authorial integrity but also suggest an element of competition that saw Orosius writing partly in reaction to Eutropius’s text. The divergence between Eutropius and Orosius is also demonstrated by Orosius’s decision to predate according to the foundation of Rome: ‘One thousand three hundred years before the founding of the City, Ninus, the frst king of the Assyrians…’ (1.4.1, 1:21).68 This method of dating is superfuous for the purposes of the Breviarium, as Eutropius begins his narrative with the founding of Rome and has no need to predate history before that event. Orosius follows no example in dating events that occurred before the founding of the City. The death of Caesar at the opening of Book 7 of Eutropius’s Breviarium is dated according to ab urbe condita: ‘In about the seven hundred and ninth year of the city, after Caesar had been killed, the Civil Wars were renewed, for the senate favoured the assassins of Caesar.’69 From this point, there is a distinct reduction in the use of the dating system, with only fve references ab urbe condita in the fnal four books.70 Instead, Eutropius locates the chronology of events, narrated as they are according to imperial biography, by the age of the emperor and the length of his reign, for example: ‘He [Vitellius] died in the ffty-seventh year of his life, in the eighth month and frst day of his reign.’71 The chronological methodologies of Eutropius and Orosius here diverge, as Orosius sustains his dating scheme by ab urbe condita throughout the fnal two books of the Historiae. Orosius’s continued use of ab urbe condita beyond Eutropius’s example enables the location of important events such as the accession of Augustus and the birth of Christ according to the foundation of Rome (7.20.1, 3:55; 7.3.1, 3:20). These events have intrinsic signifcance, and are a central element in the framework of Orosius’s historiographical approach. Orosius’s persistence in dating associates them with Rome, in conformity with the presentation of all history in the work. The independent calculation of a large swathe of history dated according to ab urbe condita in Books 6 and 7 indicates Orosius’s historiographical concerns, in the perpetual importance of Rome, the value of stylistic and structural continuity, and the resemblance of the Historiae to a chronicle in its cohesive, sustained, and strict chronological formulation. In choosing to date ab urbe condita, Orosius aligns the Historiae with Eutropius’s Breviarium suggesting their shared concerns while at the same time extending Eutropius’s methodology beyond its original scope and subverting its function, to integrate this form of dating into his ideological reinterpretation of the past. Within ancient literature, conficting ideologies trigger the multiplication of historical narratives, and alternative versions of history arise. This

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is arguably what was happening in the fourth and early ffth centuries, from Constantine and Eusebius to Eutropius and Festus, to Ammianus Marcellinus, to the Church historians Theodoret, Socrates, and Sozomen, to Sulpicius Severus and his Chronica, and to Symmachus and his patronage of the editing of Livy’s history at the turn of the fourth century. The ‘historicization’ of Christianity saw an intensifcation of competition, where Christian authors attempted to crystallize modes of worship, doctrine, and behaviour, and defend the status of Christianity historically against other religions. The Historiae is a key text in this process. It effectively rewrote the version of Roman history found in Eutropius’s Breviarium, developing it to universal proportions temporally and spatially, and transforming the perspective so that secular and political history were given a Christian meaning. Yet, this was not simply Christian history; the providence of the Christian God and the infuence of Christianity on the direction of history are predated, not from the birth of Christ but from the moment of Creation. Roman history is reshaped, the emperors are Christianized, the institution of the Church is elided, and the providential power of God is projected forward and backward in time.

Audience and the Historiae Returning to the question that opened this chapter, what is the text, the purpose of the Historiae could be determined by its intended audience. As John Marincola argues, the writer establishes their authority according to the envisioned audience, and Orosius’s intended reader must have directed the objectives and orientation of the Historiae.72 Another question therefore needs to be asked: who is the text for? Before the Historiae, there would have been a need for a version of secular history, similar to the need for the breviaria of Festus and Eutropius, but a version palatable to a Christian audience. The need for this type of history fulflled by the Historiae, although extended and excerpted in later periods, was not superseded by any other author, and Orosius’s work was enduringly popular. According to Lacroix, the Historiae ‘replaced and supplanted traditional texts’, those of Pompeius Trogus, Justin, Florus, and even Eutropius, with Orosius becoming the ‘offcial historian of pagan and Christian times of the past’.73 Lacroix argues that ‘[a]ll the old cultures have had their “easily digestible” accounts’, and Orosius’s Historiae functions to supply the new Christian Roman culture with theirs.74 The text assimilated the Christian religion, world history, and secular political Roman history in what was in some senses an ultraconservative history potentially for a wide-ranging Christian audience. It should not be assumed that, because the Historiae is a work of apologetic, the envisioned readership is the non-Christian critics of Christianity whom it frequently addresses. Mark Edwards has observed that a treatise dedicated to a persecuting magistrate ‘will be written as though the whole of the pagan world could overhear it; yet the silence of posterity will suggest

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that it found no reader outside the Church’. Edwards argues that it is only possible to guess at the distinction between the implied and intended audience of apologetical works, or between the intended audience and the eventual readership. Simon Price identifes the ‘exoteric’ (outside) and the ‘esoteric’ (inside) audience, stressing that apologetical works that respond to criticism and engage with an exoteric formal addressee could be used by Christians in arguing against their opponents. These texts could strengthen the faith of a Christian readership, and provide ready-made arguments to use in discussions with non-Christians. Price perceives that actual readerships are ‘unknowable, but perhaps not crucial’.76 Little attention has been given to the issue of the audience of the Historiae, as critics assume that the reader is, axiomatically, pagan.77 But the issue of the intended audience is not a simple distinction between Christian and pagan, whatever these terms meant in the early ffth century CE.78 How can we reduce the fuidity of ‘the reader’ to a singular defnition, and how can that theoretical reader be categorized according to the allegiance of belief? Just as the genre of the text is diffcult to stereotype, so is the speculative reader. Yet, reaching to understand who Orosius was writing for reveals the ideology behind the text’s conception as well as providing a frame alongside its genre that we can lean on to see how the Historiae has been comprehended and categorized. Although the rhetorical style of the Historiae constantly directs its invective against an opponent or ‘detractor’, the identity of the intended reader is opaque. There is only one clear statement on the audience of the text: But since, although these arguments are presented very truthfully and strongly, they nevertheless require a faithful and obedient listener; moreover, my present audience (I shall see whether or not they will believe at some time) certainly at present does not believe, and I shall now bring forward rather quickly arguments which they themselves, although they are unwilling to approve them, cannot disapprove. (7.1.5, 3:284)79 The narrative voice expects to have and envisions a reader, in contrast to Ammianus Marcellinus’s acknowledgement of the possibility that his text would not be read: ‘Having reached this stage in my complex story, I earnestly beg my readers, should I have any, not to demand minute details…’80 Orosius’s audience is defned by faith, or rather an absence of faith; it is unambiguous here that they ‘do not believe’, they are not Christian, but Orosius hopes to induce them to Christian belief and to abandon their presumed paganism. Although it is tempting to extrapolate from here that the audience was intended to be pagan and not Christian, and that the text was intended to have a proselytizing effect, the rhetorical posturing of a multilayered narrative voice that pushes the text in different directions does not allow this conclusion. Orosius’s statement on audience comes in the context of the opening of Book 7, where the narrative voice steps back to regard the rhetorical

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formulation of the text so far. It has been indisputably proved that there is only one true God, the Christian God, the Creator God, and Jesus Christ Incarnate (7.1.1, 3:14). Orosius recognizes the shared religiosity of Christianity and paganism, that ‘we and our opponents’ live with reverence toward religion and with the acknowledgement and worship of a higher power, the nature of our belief alone being different, because it is our practice to confess that all things are from and through one God, and theirs to think of as many gods as there are things. (7.1.6, 284)81 The text then directs an intense polemic against the existence and nature of the pagan pantheon, reversing the challenge to Christianity to prove the non-existence of the pagan gods. Or, the narrative voice allows, if they did exist, they were so ineffective and powerless that they are easily dismissed: ‘For we are concerned with great gods, as they think, not with most paltry artifcers who lose their skill if material is lacking’ (7.1.9, 3:285).82 The ineffcacy of the gods is proven by the continual sacrifces and performance of religious rites that did nothing to prevent further disasters.83 This derogatory attack on paganism reveals Orosius’s suggestion that the Historiae was supposed to stimulate conversion to Christianity as disingenuous, as the invective would alienate rather than persuade the pagan reader. Lacroix has drawn similar conclusions, that Orosius knew that the pagans were uninterested in his ideas, and that the Historiae was a response to pagan culture but was intended for a Christian reader who had to exist in a pagan society.84 Orosius surely could not expect to fnd the ‘faithful and obedient’ listener that the text requires in a non-Christian reader. In contradiction, then, to the explicit representation of the author, the intended reader is not a pagan ready to be converted to Christianity. This conclusion creates a disjuncture between the anticipated reader and the hypothetical reader. The hypothetical reader, also described as the addressee, is variously portrayed, often as pagan, and in this guise is a rhetorical construct to be invoked, cajoled, sympathized with, and insulted by the narrative voice.85 Seeing a distinction between the intended reader and the pagan addressee alters how the text is received; it is more likely to be vitriolic and less concerned with an accurate representation of pagan culture. Despite its self-presentation, the text is not interested in a dialogue or a reasoned debate with paganism. Instead, the text is only concerned with winning the rhetorical argument and proving the apologetic point. Although it is likely that Orosius was writing against the same pagans Augustine was attempting to counter in De civitate Dei, as has been claimed, these pagans do not necessarily constitute a readership: ‘It cannot be assumed that, because the City of God is an apologetic work, it is primarily written for the non-Christian critics of Christianity to whom it so often refers.’86 Alan Cameron has argued convincingly along these lines, beginning

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with the sermons of Augustine and moving on to De civitate Dei. Cameron understands that Augustine’s intended audience, in his congregation and readers, were former pagans, ‘cultivated members of the elite whose faith was to be given a rude shock by the sack of Rome six years later’.88 Augustine was concerned with those recent converts whose commitment to Christianity was not secure and who might return to old religious practices: ‘Augustine’s arguments were aimed less at converting practicing pagans than providing vulnerable Christians with the ammunition to resist the seductive arguments of their remaining pagan peers.’89 Similarly, the Historiae can be interpreted as intended to secure Christian belief, not necessarily incite pagan conversion. Despite the distinctions between religious beliefs in the ancient world provided by labels that give clear defnition to certain groups or groups of ideas in society, these boundaries are anachronistic and artifcial, as recognized by Averil Cameron: What may seem now to be distinct and separate sets of issues – Christianity versus Judaism, Christianity in relation to polytheism, and true as opposed to ‘false’ belief within Christianity – were close together in the minds of early Christians and approached in very similar ways. Naturally, the edges became blurred.90 Although the partitioning of Christians and pagans in such absolute terms follows the apologetic discourse of both Augustine and Orosius, it misses (arguably deliberately) the more fuid religious boundaries of the late fourth and early ffth centuries, where lax Christians, recent converts to Christianity, those pagans prepared to convert, those operating under the pretence of Christian conversion, the unbaptized, those considered to be heterodox, those Christians still practising pagan traditions and rituals, and those too uninterested to demonstrate allegiance, could all be conceived of as the target for both the Historiae and De civitate Dei.91 Both Alan Cameron in relation to De civitate Dei and Benoît Lacroix regarding the Historiae draw the same conclusion – that both texts had a ‘realistic’ audience, an envisioned reader, and that neither Augustine nor Orosius could have written their works for pagans. Cameron states that ‘… the City of God was surely not primarily addressed to practicing pagans. Augustine cannot realistically have expected hard-core pagans even to read, much less be persuaded by, so massive and polemical a work.’92 According to Lacroix, Orosius knew that the pagans were uninterested in his ideas and were more likely to go to the amphitheatre than to read the Historiae: Quand il écrit son Historia adversus Paganos, Orose connaît que ses Païens sont peu intéressés aux idées parce qu’ils sont trop intéressés aux faits; il les sait beaucoup plus prêts à se rendre au cirque qu’à lire son histoire. Quelques-uns la liront peut-être. Quand même, il faut qu’il écrive; il faut qu’il respecte la psychologie de celui pour qui l’événement est seul point de départ et seul point d’arrivée de réfexion.93

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Lacroix offers a psychological insight into Orosius, that his zealous imperative to write makes the reality of his reader irrelevant; the text represents for him the beginning and end of all thought.94 When writing to Jerome, Augustine described Orosius as ‘keen-spirited, swift to speak, and full of zeal’.95 The same fervour impelled Orosius across the Mediterranean to a foreign land where his reception was unknown, and to the Holy Land, where he became involved in the Pelagian controversy that would ultimately see him accused of blasphemy. While it seems that the assumed reader was Christian, it is also possible that the text was not written with a specifc audience in mind, and a more abstract, universalizing reader was envisioned. The issue of audience could have been sidelined in preference for the rhetorical impetus driving its composition, and this would explain the inconsistencies and variability of the text towards the reader. With no frm idea of audience at the outset, the intended reader alternated according to the frame of mind of the author at a particular moment, or the material being dealt with. Pressed onwards ultimately by his own conviction and the rectitude of his ideas, the necessity to direct the text to a consistent audience could become a secondary concern. The puzzle of audience has been much further developed in relation to Augustine’s De civitate Dei, and Christian Tornau’s model for understanding the intended reader can be usefully extended to the Historiae. Tornau argues that in apologetic texts written for a Christian audience like De civitate Dei, it is possible to differentiate sharply between the pagan opponent and the Christian addressee: Zu Augustins Zeit, als die Christianisierung des Imperiums schon weit fortgeschritten ist, ist es demgegenüber auch möglich, apologetische Texte für ein christliches Publikum zu schreiben und den heidnischen Gegner vom christlichen Adressaten scharf zu trennen; wie wir sehen werden, ist Augustinus in De civitate Dei so vorgegangen.96 Tornau recognizes that the presence of the pagan critic is always a feature of apologetic texts, whether in the role of addressee or opponent, and he understands a clear difference between the roles.97 Before the eyes of the judging addressees, the debate between Augustine and his opponents is enacted, where a perpetual stream of pagan objections demands the creation of counter-arguments from Augustine in defence of Christianity: Was sich vor den Augen des urteilenden Adressaten zwischen Augustinus und seinen Gegnern abspielt, ist ein Streitgespräch, eine Disputation, in der auf die verteidigenden Darlegungen Augustins immer neue pagane Einwände folgen, die wiederum neue Argumente des Autors zur Verteidigung des Christentums provozieren.98 Tornau’s concept sees Augustine as the speaker, the imagined pagan critics as his opponents, and his Christian readers as his addressees with the

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authority of judges; it is they who must decide the case: ‘Die Adressaten werden mit der Autorität von “Richtern” (iudices) ausgestattet, die den Konfikt zwischen Augustinus und seinen heidnischen Gegnern zu entscheiden haben.’99 Applying this model to the Historiae, with Orosius as speaker in dispute with a pagan opponent intended for a Christian addressee, explains the apparent unconcern of the text about alienating a pagan reader or the unfavourable representation of pagan religion. The instability of the text, in who it is addressed to and against, how it positions itself, and what it argues, leaves the question of who the intended or actual audience of the Historiae was without resolution, but it seems unlikely that Orosius wrote for a pagan readership. Asking the question still generates insight in evaluating the purpose and function of the text, just as the multilateralism of the narrative voice that cannot be easily unpicked still reveals Orosius’s historiographical methodology and authorial intentions behind the text.

Narrative voice and the limits of Orosian biography The narrative voice of the Historiae is intimately linked to both the audience and the purpose of the text, in the way that it both addresses a reader and identifes an opponent. Methodological and refexive passages regularly punctuate the work, revealing how the narrative voice shapes the readers’ reception of the past. Criticism has tended to overlook the narrative voice, especially the need to disconnect it from the construct of the author.100 The reader encounters a concrete portrayal of the frst person in the Historiae, the constructed narrative voice, that foregrounds and controls the narrative. Although the boundary between the narrative voice and the version of Orosius that we receive as an author and historical fgure is deliberately blurred, these two constructs are in fact distinct. The reader is expected to know that the ‘I’ of the text is Orosius, but nowhere is there a refexive statement or reference to the narrative voice by name. In fact, the name of the author is attached to the Historiae through the paratext, which is itself subject to alteration and evolution. The use of the frst name is not evident until Jordanes’s usage in the mid-sixth century.101 Arnaud-Lindet has suggested that ‘Paulus’ is not in reality part of Orosius’s name, but is an error by copyists of the text who extrapolated ‘Paulus’ from the initial ‘P’, which designated his clerical status as a Presbyter.102 Understanding the narrative voice through the biography of the author is an extremely limited approach. The confusion surrounding the author’s name is further complicated by the association of the word ‘Ormesta’, ‘Ormista’, or ‘Hormesta’ with the Historiae in many of the manuscripts, although this is likely to have been a later addition.103 The word is treated variously either as a name, an adjective, or part of the title.104 Arnaud-Lindet interprets ‘ormesta’ not as a name applied to Orosius but as the equivalent in Old Breton of excidium in Latin, meaning ruin or destruction. The word is therefore an element of the Breton subtitle of the Historiae, De ormesta mundi, ‘The Destruction of the World’,

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emphasizing its millenarian perspective.105 Alistair Campbell suggests that ‘Hormesta’ as the traditional title for the work is ‘doubtless a portmanteau word made from some such contraction as Or.m.hist. (= Orosii mundi historia)’.106 Despite the fuidity of the title of the work and the name of the author, criticism has represented these as secure and factual. The tendency to read biography back into the surviving textual evidence is common, demonstrated most spectacularly by pseudo-Dexter’s interpolated biography of Orosius from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.107 Most frequently, the narrative of the Historiae is interpreted literally as an accurate relation of events in Orosius’s life.108 This is most clearly seen in Book 5 where the Christian identity conjured by the text is construed as a biographical detail: Long ago, when wars raged throughout the whole world, every province enjoyed its own kings, its own laws, and its own customs, and there was no alliance of mutual good feelings where a divergence of power divided…If anyone then, at that time, overcome by the severity of evils deserted his native land to the enemy, to what unknown place did he, an unknown, fnally go? What people, in general an enemy, did he, an enemy, supplicate? To whom did he at a frst meeting entrust himself, not having been invited by reason of an alliance by name, nor induced by a common law, nor secure by a oneness of religion? (5.1.14–16, 2:175)109 Orosius refects his account of the pre-Christian past as chaotic and politically divided into his own biography, building the rhetoric in preparation for the change from an abstract hypothetical scenario to a more defnite frst person with an account of his escape from his ‘native land’ to the Christian sanctity he found in Africa: But for me, when I fee at the frst disturbance of whatever commotion, since it is a question of a secure place of refuge, everywhere there is native land, everywhere my law and my religion. Now Africa has received me as kindly as I confdently approached her…Africa, of her own free will, spreads out wide her kindly bosom to receive allies of her religion and peace, and of her own free will invites the weary ones whom she cherishes. (5.2.1–2, 2:176)110 The account of oppression, danger, and escape relieved by the welcome found in a Christian land enables the creation of a universal Christian identity, in contrast to the warring and inhospitable world before Christianity: The breadth of the East, the vastness of the North, the extensiveness of the South, and the very large and secure seats of the great islands are of my law and name because I, as a Roman and a Christian, approach Christians and Romans…the one God…is both loved and feared by all;

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the same laws, which are subject to one God, prevail everywhere; and where I shall go unknown, I do not fear sudden violence as if I be unprotected. (5.2.3–5, 2:176)111 Orosius’s life experiences have been read into the Historiae here. And yet, the narrative voice swiftly returns to the apologetic point, that because of Christianity the times have been demonstrably improved: ‘These are the blessings of our times, which our ancestors did not have in their entirety either in the quiet of the present or the hope of the future or in a place of common refuge’ (5.2.8, 2:177).112 The emphatic apologetic here discounts what has been an automatic assumption, that these details are biographical. Instead, the implication that the dangerous fight from a native land was drawn directly from the experiences of the author is intended to engage the reader emotionally and emphasize the ameliorating effect of Christianity. The projection of a potentially fctionalized autobiography of the author, the historical fgure of ‘Orosius’, complicates the narrative voice. The multiple tones and registers of the voice itself, and the numerous apologetical agendas the voice switches between make the text diffcult to defne, problematic to categorize, and impossible to designate as uniform in purpose.113 The contradiction and multiplicity are more than simply stylistic; it is fundamental to the Historiae and any understanding of it. The splintered narrative voice is exposed in the diverging attitude to empire. The political entity of empire is the favoured form of government and provides a narrative framework for the text. The Roman empire is chosen by God to succeed all others, under which the Incarnation would occur, and the Final Judgement would (eventually) take place (Prologue 15–16, 1:9). The divinely ordained empire, Christianized primarily by the conversion of the Roman emperors, functions as the triumphant culmination for the entire text. However, the notion of empire and the Roman empire in particular is also derided in the postcolonial perspective the narrative voice adopts: Behold, then, how happily Rome conquers, to the extent that whatever is outside Rome is unhappily conquered. Therefore, at what value is this drop of happiness obtained with great labour to be weighed, to which the felicity of one city is ascribed in the midst of so great a mass of unhappiness through which the upheaval of the whole world is brought about? (5.1.3–4, 2:173)114 The anti-Roman discourse is associated with pro-provinciality, where the terrible effect of martial conquest on Carthage, Spain, Italy, and Gaul is elucidated. Carthage is reduced to a single funeral pyre, with its citizens casting themselves into the fames (5.1.5, 2:83); Spain, for 200 years, watered its felds with its own blood and was reduced to internecine confict (5.1.6, 2:83); Italy unhappily resisted the Roman occupation for 400 years (5.1.7, 2:83); and Gaul, at the point of a sword, was forced to profess a promise of eternal

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slavery (6.12.2–5, 2:199–200). The impact of war necessitates the denigration of empire, a discourse which is not reconciled comfortably with Orosius’s pro-imperial stance that enables the continued existence of mankind.115 Beyond the tension created by the contrariety of the narrative voice and the apologetic argument, the constant switching of the voice between different registers adds a further layer to the presentation of the text. The narrative voice is broadly occupied in three ways: one, the factual relation of events, more neutral in tone and chronologically determined; two, the apologetic passages, where the polemic about the narrative of history becomes most evident; and three, the self-conscious concern with authorial methodology, where the narrative voice offers insight into the composition of the text. The indulgence of the narrative voice in elaboration or elision of events creates a moment of suspension, where the author steps back from the progression of the work and reminds the reader that the text is a subjective and individualized construct. In Book 1, for example, the narrative is interrupted: But now I am forced to confess that for the purpose of anticipating the end of my book, I am passing over many details concerning the circumstances of the numerous evils of the age and am abbreviating everything. For in no way could I have at any time passed through so dense a forest of evils unless I were able at times to hasten my progress by frequent leaps. (1.12.1, 1:32–33)116 These moments are a continuation of the self-conscious style of the Prologue and the prefaces to the individual books. The Preface to Book 3 provides an example of this rationalization of authorship: ‘In an earlier book, I called to witness and, now of necessity, according to your instructions, I take up again the story of the conficts of passed ages’ (3 Preface 1, 1:77).117 The narrator introduces a new register, with a direct address to Augustine, which extends the self-refexivity in a different direction. Augustine is the patron who established the principal aim of the work (elucidated in the Prologue): Rich, indeed, now is this opportunity for grief and reproach, but where already your reverence has exercised the zeal for wisdom and truth, it is not right for me to venture beyond this. Let it suffce that I have reminded the reader and have turned him from any other intention to the fullness of that text of yours. (3.4.6, 1:85–6)118 The change in address to a more individualized reader allows the narrative voice to position this as an exchange between Augustine and Orosius, one that the wider audience is supposed to witness. The narrative voice here explicitly aligns the Historiae with De civitate Dei; one text necessarily supplements the other, and the scope of the Historiae is defned by Augustine’s work. The constant intrusion of the voice into the narrative disturbs the historiographical fow of the text, assuming a position of mastery and breaking

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down the meaning for the reader in directed terms, as well as explaining the methodology of the composition. Unlike the multiplicity and contradiction of the narrative voice, refexive intrusion here does not create tension in the same way; instead, it requires the reader to suspend their involvement in the narrative. It returns the audience to the moment of composition rather than allowing the uninterrupted application of the Historiae to the reader’s own times or a critical evaluation of the text. The narrative voice of the Historiae is complex and multifaceted. It is interwoven with the identity of the author, the historical fgure of Orosius, from which an autobiographical narrative has been derived. The text itself, foregrounded by the voice of the narrator, struggles to contain many apologetical agendas; there are many cases to argue, many perspectives to be represented, and where they become inconsistent the voice is drawn off in different directions. These multiple registers make contradiction not only inevitable but also an active and striking characteristic of the text. The narrator varies in how paganism is condemned, demonstrates an inconsistent attitude towards empire, and shifts into self-refexive passages that interrupt the authoritative narrative of history it elsewhere works so hard to construct. The inconsistency of the Historiae has made it much harder for readers across the ages to grasp frmly what the text is and who it is for. This destabilized text has, in turn, precipitated a reception history marked by a multiplicity of claims over the nature of the text, which has come to be seen as unreliable and uncertain, eventuating in the Historiae’s denigration.

Conclusion The Historiae is a work of historiographical innovation; elements of various literary genres – chronicle, history, breviarium, and apologetic – are intertwined in one text, creating a new genre. According to Zecchini, the Historiae stands between the times, as ‘the last work of Roman historiography and the frst of western Christian historiography’.119 Van Nuffelen recognizes the peculiar nature of the Historiae as less the paradigm of Christian historiography and more an important exception to it.120 The Historiae rests uneasily within the genre of historiography, not only because of its perceived inadequacies but also because the text seeks to challenge and subvert the traditions of writing about the past. Orosius defes the form of historiography and disputes its content, constructing a proto-philosophy of history that demonstrates the infuence of the Christian God throughout time, appropriating and reworking secular classical history into a new form of Christian universal history. The tradition of late antique Christian historiography was dominated by the sacred histories of Eusebius of Caesarea, Sulpicius Severus, and Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, which emphasized the importance of ecclesiastical affairs and Christianity as defned by the institution of the Christian Church. The Historiae takes a different approach, almost completely eliding the ecclesiastical institution of the Church. Instead, Orosius focuses on the secular and political, and, rather

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than shoehorning Christian ecclesiastical history into an existing model, explodes the model by representing God’s divine providence as active within all of time and space, not simply from the period following the Incarnation. Orosius then politicizes this Christianized historical model, aligning the institution of empire with the authority of God, culminating in the sacred alliance with the Roman empire. He represents this foremost in the synchronization of Christ and Augustus, with the Roman empire as chosen, under which time would continue until the Final Judgement.121 The Historiae’s unique creation has been variously critically received, seen by Van Nuffelen’s recognition of Orosius’s innovation, Michael Whitby’s epithet of ‘the oddball Orosius’, or John Matthews’s judgement of the Historiae as an ‘embarrassment’.122 The multilateral registers of the narrative voice, the lack of uniformity in the apologic agendas, and the indistinct audience complicate defnitions about the purpose of the text and how it can be categorized within or without genres. But the importance of the work cannot be overlooked; this engagement of a Christian work with secular history was unique for its time. Although later writers looked over Orosius’s shoulder in extending and excerpting the Historiae, Orosius’s contribution was never surpassed or replaced, and became the main instrument for the transmission of history from antiquity in a Christianized form throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period. The persistent insecurity of meaning about what the Historiae is and what it is supposed to do has also been productive. The work has been reformulated for new purposes and reconceived for different audiences, as demonstrated most immediately by the manuscript tradition. The Historiae has frequently been split and reproduced with other works, particularly Justin’s Epitome, and the epitome of Livy. The geographical chapter was separated from the Historiae and circulated as a stand-alone text, as Andy Merrills has argued, from the ffth century onwards.123 The work was given a separate title, either Discriptio terrarum, or Cosmographia Orosii, or Dicta Pauli Orosii historiographi de situ orbis, de Asia videlicet maiore et minore, de Europa et de Africa.124 The reception of the text further diversifed into the early modern period, and it features prominently among the earliest works reproduced in incunabula and printed books. In the mid-ffteenth century, a section of the Historiae was included with Agostino Dati’s grammatical textbook, the Elegantiolae, and an anonymous treatise on punctuation, De punctandi genere.125 In the late ffteenth century in incunabula, the work translated into French was often paired with Seneca.126 Fluid interpretations of the Historiae and where it fts manifested in constant reframing in and out of various genres. More than any other historiographical work from antiquity, the Historiae has enjoyed a remarkably rich and diverse reception, although the ossifcation of recent critical attitudes makes this diffcult to appreciate.

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Notes 1 John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London: Duckworth, 1989), 597; M. L. W. Laistner, ‘Some Refections on Latin Historical Writing in the Fifth Century’, Classical Philology 35, no. 3 (1940): 250–2; J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 80–1; Chester G. Starr, ‘Historical and Philosophical Time’, History and Theory 6 (1966): 28; Peter Clemoes, AngloSaxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 129; T. D. Barnes, ‘The Fragments of Tacitus’ Histories’, Classical Philology 72, no. 3 (1977): 229. 2 For some examples, see apologetic: R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 4; Denys Hay, Annalists and Historians (London: Methuen, 1977), 31; Laistner, ‘Latin Historical Writing’, 250; R. J. Deferrari, ‘Introduction’, in Paulus Orosius: The Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1964), xx. Theology: Markus, Saeculum, 162. Rhetoric: Clemoes, Anglo-Saxon England, 129. Polemic: Barnes, ‘Fragments’, 229. Chronology: Ann Christys, Christians in al-Andalus (711-1000) (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002), 135. Epitome: J. W. Burrow, A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 195; A. J. Collins, Review of The Tollemache Orosius, ed. by Alistair Campbell, The British Museum Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1954): 71. Textbook: John Matthews, Review of Orose et ses idées, by Benoît Lacroix, Medium Aevum 36 (1967): 168; Brian Croke and Alanna M. Emmett, ‘Historiography in Late Antiquity: An Overview’, History and Historians in Late Antiquity, ed. by Brian Croke and Alanna M. Emmett (Sydney: Pergamon Press, 1983), 3; Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, Orose: Histoires (Contre les Païens) (Paris: Budé, 1990), 1:xlv. 3 Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1. 4 Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 48–9. This approach is counter-balanced by Walter Goffart: ‘It is risky to judge a book only by the description its author provides.’ Walter A. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 348. 5 For example, Laistner states that Orosius ‘professed to write history’, and interprets this as a justifcation for appraising the historical worth of the book. Laistner, ‘Latin Historical Writing’, 251; 252. Similarly, Brenda Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence: A History. The Bible, Virgil, Orosius, Augustine, and Dante (New York: Continuum, 2012), 17. 6 Prologue 10, 1:8: praeceperas ergo ut, ex omnibus qui haberi ad praesens possunt historiarum atque annalium fastis... 7 1.1.1, 1:10: Et quoniam omnes propemodum tam apud Graecos quam apud Latinos studiosi ad scribendum viri, qui res gestas regum populorumque ob diuturnam memoriam verbis propagaverunt, initium scribendi a Nino...fecere. For an extended discussion of the choice of dating from Creation or Ninus, see 18–19 and 51–4. 8 1.1.5, 1:10: ...anni III CLXXXIIII, qui ab omnibus historiographis vel omissi vel ignorati sunt. 9 1.1.6, 1:11: colliguntur anni II XV in quibus se inter actores scriptoresque omnium otia negotiaque triverunt. 10 1.1.7, 1:11: Quapropter res ipsa exigit ex his libris quam brevissime vel pauca contingere qui originem mundi loquentes praeteritorum fdem adnuntiatione futurorum et post subsequa probatione fecerunt.

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11 See Werner, who understands the Historiae to be a continuation of the historical books of the Old Testament. Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Gott, Herrscher und Historiograph: der Geschichtsschreiber als Interpret des Werken Gottes in der Welt und Ratgeber der Könige (4. bis 12. Jahrhundert)’, in Deus qui mutat tempora: Menschen und Institutionen im Wandel des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Alfons Becker zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Hubertus Seibert, and Franz Staab (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), n7. 12 Olympiodorus of Thebes 4.68, col. 1. See E. A. Thompson, ‘Olympiodorus of Thebes’, The Classical Quarterly 38 (1944): 47. 13 2.3.10, 1:90: Quae modo a me plenius ab ipso Vrbis exordio, revolutis per ordinem historiis, proferentur. 14 2.6.1, 1:95: Igitur eodem tempore Cyrus, Rex Persarum – quem superius explicandae historiae causa commemoraveram... 15 3.2.9, 1:142: Contexui indigestae historiae inextricabilem cratem. 16 5.3.4, 2:88: sed de varietate discordiantium historicorum aliquanta iam diximus; quorum suffciat detecta haec et male nota mendaciorum nota, quia parum credendum esse in ceteris evidenter ostendunt qui in his quoque, quae ipsi videre, diversi sunt. 17 Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:xxii: ‘C’est donc une espèce de breuiarium des malheurs du monde depuis son origine.’ 18 Benoît Lacroix, Orose et ses idées (Paris: Librairie philosophique, 1965), 51–2. 19 Arnaldo Momigliano, Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1966), 1:96. 20 H. W. Bird recognizes the use of Eutropius’s Breviarium by Orosius. H. W. Bird (ed. and trans.), The Breviarium ab urbe condita of Eutropius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993), lvi. 21 Hans Armin Gärtner and Ulrich Eigler, ‘Epitome’, Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Antiquity, vol. 4, Cyr-Epy, ed. by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 1153. 22 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 135. 23 Prologue 10, 1:8: ...ordinato breviter voluminis textu explicarem. See HansWerner Goetz, Die Geschichtstheologie des Orosius, Impulse der Forschung 32 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 13. 24 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 133. 25 1.1.4, 1:10: ego initium miseriae hominum ab initio peccati hominis docere institui, paucis dumtaxat isdemque breviter delibatis. 26 1.2.106, 1:41–2: Percensui breviter ut potui provincias et insulas orbis universi. 27 4.20.40, 2:68–9: Plurima praeterea et satis diversis proventibus bella multarum ubique gentium gesta sunt, quae brevitatis causa praetermisi. 28 3 Preface 1, 1:134: …repeto...de anteactis confictationibus saeculi nec omnia nec per omnia posse quae gesta et sicut gesta sunt explicari, quoniam magna atque innumera copiosissime et a plurimis scripta sunt. 29 3 Preface 2, 2:134. 30 3 Preface 3, 1:134: ...nos vim rerum, non imaginem commendare curemus. 31 3 Preface 3, 1:134. 32 3 Preface 3, 1:134: Sed ego cum utrumque vitandum sciam, utrumque faciam ut quocumque modo alterutra temperentur, si nec multa praetermissa nec multum constricta videantur. 33 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 134. 34 See Arnaud-Lindet, Orose. 35 Eutropius’s Breviarium lacks an authorial statement on the purpose of the text, but the Prologue reveals Eutropius’s composition as fulflling a request from the emperor Valens to collect a brief chronological narrative of the achievements of the Romans.

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36 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 134; 135. 37 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 135. 38 For a discussion of the style, brevity, rhetoric, and truthfulness of the Historiae, see Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 115–45. 39 2.1.1, 1:84. 40 Robert Browning, ‘History’, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. 2, part 5, The Later Principate, ed. by E. J. Kenney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 72. 41 3.16.1, 1:163: Igitur Alexander anno ab Vrbe condita CCCCXXVI patri Philippo successit in regnum. 42 See Justin, Epitoma, 11.2–13.1. 43 3.16.3, 1:164: In exercitu eius fuere peditum XXXII milia, equitum IIII milia quingenti, naves CLXXX. Hac tam parva manu universum terrarum orbem utrum admirabilius sit quia vicerit an quia adgredi ausus fuerit incertum est. Justin records 182 ships. 44 Den Boer identifes only one place (1.12.2, 6) where Eutropius interrupts his own narrative. Willem Den Boer, Some Minor Roman Historians (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 138. 45 3.20.5, 1:173: O dura mens hominum et cor semper inhumanum! ego ipse, qui haec pro adserenda omnium temporum alternanti calamitate percenseo, in relatu tanti mali quo vel morte ipsa vel formidine mortis accepta totus mundus intremuit, numquid inlacrimavi oculis? numquid corde condolui? numquid revolvens haec propter communem vivendi statum maiorum miserias meas feci? 46 2.18.4, 1:124: Ecce parvissima pagina verbisque paucissimis quantos de tot provinciis populis atque urbibus non magis explicui actus operam quam inplicui globos miseriarum: ‘quis enim cladem illius’ temporis, ‘quis fando funera explicet aut aequare lacrimis possit dolores’? 47 4.12.9, 2:41: ...una tantummodo aestate Romana sanguinem viscera non sudarunt, et inter plurimas magnorum saeculorum aetates misera civitas, vere misera mater, vix uno tempore a timore luctuum, ut non dicam ab ipsis luctibus, conquievit. 48 Bird, Breviarium, xliv. 49 As recognized by Browning: ‘Orosius continually interrupts his narrative to make personal comments, moral or ironical, on the matter which he narrates, and to suggest to his reader the appropriate reaction.’ Browning, ‘History’, 72. 50 See Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 16: ‘...expressions of psychology and emotions and the use of theoretical statements serve a purpose within the text in order to draw the reader into the narrative and convince him of the correctness of Orosius’ depiction of past and present’. 51 Eutropius, Preface, 2: ‘In keeping with the wish of your Clemency I have gathered in a brief narrative, in chronological sequence, the conspicuous achievements of the Romans, whether in war or in peace. I have also concisely added those topics which appeared exceptional in the lives of the emperors, so that your Serenity’s divine mind may rejoice that it has followed the actions of illustrious men before it learned of them from reading.’ Res Romanas ex voluntate mansuetudinis tuae ab urbe condita ad nostram memoriam, quae in negotiis vel bellicis vel civilibus eminebant, per ordinem temporum brevi narratione collegi, strictim additis etiam his, quae in principum vita egregia extiterunt, ut tranquillitatis tuae possit mens divina laetari prius se inlustrium virorum facta in administrando imperio secutam, quam cognosceret lectione. 52 See Den Boer, Minor Roman Historians, 124–37 for a systematic analysis of these types. 53 Eutropius, 4.23, 28: M. Porcio Catone et Q. Marcio Rege consulibus, sexcentesimo tricesimo et tertio anno ab urbe condita…

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54 Bird, Breviarium, xix. See also Arnaldo Momigliano, The Confict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 85–6. 55 See Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Uses of Classical History and Medieval Geography in St Gall’, in Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond 300-1600, ed. by Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 65–83. For the Old English Orosius within a wider educational context, see Elizabeth M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000-c. 1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 22. See Chapter 4, 108–113. 56 Prologue 10, 1:8: ...ordinato breviter voluminis textu explicarem. For Orosius’s wranglings about the beginning of history, see 1.1.1–15, 10–12. 57 4.5.10, 2:19: Ecce continuatim quae et quanta numeramus accidisse annis singulis plurima. 58 3.15.1, 1:161: Cuius bella immo sub cuius bellis mundi mala ordine sequentia suspendo paulisper, ut in hoc loco pro convenientia temporum Romana subiciam. 59 3.2.9, 1:142: Contexui indigestae historiae inextricabilem cratem atque incertos bellorum orbes huc et illuc lymphatico furore gestorum verbis e vestigio secutus inplicui, quoniam tanto, ut video, inorinatius scripsi, quanto magis ordinem custodivi. For a similar justifcation, see Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, 2 Prologue, and Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, 2 Prologue. 60 For a further discussion of time and technical dating in the Historiae, see Chapter 2, 62–8. 61 Eutropius, 1.1.2, 2: ...urbem exiguam in Palatino monte constituit XI Kal. Maias, Olympiadis sextae anno tertio, post Troiae excidium, ut qui plurimum minimumque tradunt, anno trecentesimo nonagesimo quarto. 62 2.4.1, 1:90: Anno post eversionem Troiae CCCCXIIII olympiade autem sexta  – quae quinto demum anno quattuor in medio expletis apud Elidem Graeciae civitatem agone et ludis exerceri solet – urbs Roma in Italia a Romulo et Remo geminis auctoribus condita est. 63 Eutropius, 4.10.1, 24: Tertium deinde bellum contra Carthaginem suscipitur, sexcentesimo et altero ab urbe condita anno, L. Manlio Censorino et M’. Manilio consulibus, anno quinquagesimo primo postquam secundum Punicum transactum erat. 64 4.22.1, 2:71: Anno ab Vrbe condita DCII L. Censorino et M. Manilio consulibus tertium Punicum bellum exortum est. 65 7.11.1, 3:42–3: Anno ab Vrbe condita DCCCXLVI – quamvis Eutropius quinquagesimum hunc esse annum scripserit – Nerva admodum senex a Petronio praefecto praetorio et Parthenio spadone, interfectore Domitiani, imperator decimus ab Augusto creatus. 66 Eutropius, 8.1.1, 50: ‘In the eight hundred and fftieth year from the founding of the city, in the consulship of Vetus and Valens, the state returned to a most prosperous condition after being entrusted with great good fortune to virtuous rulers.’ Anno octingentesimo et quinquagesimo ab urbe condita, Vetere et Valente consulibus, res publica ad prosperrimum statum rediit, bonis principibus ingenti felicitate commissa. 67 For example, Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:x: ‘À la vérité, sur la plan de l’historiographie, Orose a eu la mauvaise fortune d’être l’abréviateur de sources qui nous sont presque toutes parvenues dans leur intégralité, si bien que, à l’exception de la partie perdue de l’Histoire romaine de Tite-Live, pour laquelle il existe d’autres possibilités de reconstitution, et de quelques fragments de la fn des Histoires de Tacite, les renseignements qu’il nous fournit sont, au titre de l’information pure, le plus souvent d’un mince intérêt pour l’historien de l’Antiquité.’ Henri-Irénée Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin, Orose et l’Augustinisme historique’, La storiografa altomedievale, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 17, vol. 1 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro,

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68 69 70 71 72 73 74

75

76

77

78 79

80 81

82 83

43

1970), 64–5: ‘Orose a d’abord été pour le moyen âge un immense répertoire de connaissances de tout ordre sur l’Antiquité classique, puisées aux meilleures sources des historiens latins.’ Thomas O’Loughlin, Teachers and CodeBreakers: The Latin Genesis Tradition, 430-800 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 11. 1.4.1, 1:43: Ante annos Vrbis conditae MCCC Ninus rex Assyriorum, ‘primus’ ut ipsi volunt. Eutropius, 7.1, 41: Anno urbis septingentesimo fere ac nono, interfecto Caesare, civilia bella reparata sunt. percussoribus enim Caesaris senatus favebat. Eutropius, 7.1, 41; 8.1, 50; 9.3, 57; 10.17, 70; 10.18, 71. Eutropius, 7.18, 47: ...periit autem aetatis anno septimo et quinquagesimo, imperii mense octavo et die uno. John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 20. Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 39: ‘Orose devient l’historien chrétien offciel des temps païens et chrétiens d’autrefois.’ Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 39: ‘C’est ainsi que peu à peu l’Historia adversus Paganos remplace et supplante bientôt les textes traditionnels, les Histoires de Trogue Pompée, de Justin, de Florus et même d’Eutrope. Orose devient l’historien chrétien offciel des temps païens et chrétiens d’autrefois, l’écrivain rapide à la portée de tous les talents, l’autorité qui a le mieux résumé toute l’histoire de l’humanité depuis Adam jusqu’en 416, soit plus de cinq mille ans d’histoire. Toutes les vielles cultures ont eu leurs digestes. Reste à savoir, maintenant, si l’Historia adversus Paganos a été pire que les autres.’ Mark J. Edwards, ‘The Constantinian Circle and the Oration to the Saints’, in Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. by Mark J. Edwards, Martin Goodman, Simon Price, and Christopher Rowland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 262. Simon Price, ‘Latin Christian Apologetics: Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian’, in Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. by Mark J. Edwards, Martin Goodman, Simon Price, and Christopher Rowland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 105–6. See A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 40; Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 16–17; T. E. Mommsen, ‘Orosius and Augustine’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by E. F. Rice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959), 336; Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 45. See Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14–33. 7.1.5, 3:15: Sed haec quoniam, etsi verissime fortissimeque dicuntur, fdelem tamen atque oboedientem requirunt, mihi autem, videro an aliquando credituris, certe nunc cum incredulis actio est, promptius ea proferam quae ipsi etsi probare noluerint, inprobare non possint. Ammianus Marcellinus, 31.5.10. Et quoniam ad has partes post multiplices ventum est actus, id lecturos (siqui erunt umquam), obtestamur, nequis a nobis scrupulose gesta…. 7.1.6, 3:15: Itaque, quantum ad conscientiam humanarum mentium pertinet, utrique sub reverentia religionis et confessione cultuque supernae potentiae vivimus, distante dumtaxat fde, quia nostrum est fateri ex uno et per unum Deum constare omnia, illorum, tam multos deos putare quam multa sunt. 7.1.9, 3:16: …nos auctorem rerum potentiam, non artifcem scientiam quaerimus, de diis quippe – ut putant – magnis, non de fabris vilissimis quaestio est, quibus nisi materia accedat, ars cessat. 7.1.11, 285: ‘But I do not think that we need to consider further the practice of religious rites, because in the midst of continual sacrifces there was no end or

44

84

85 86

87 88

89 90

91 92 93 94

95 96

Orosius as a writer of history respite from ceaseless disasters.’ 7.1.11, 3:17: Porro autem de cura caerimoniarum nec recensendum arbitror, quoniam inter sacra continua incessabilibus cladibus nullus fnis ac nulla requies fuit. ‘En défnitive, l’Historia adversus Paganos a été conçue et préparée à cause des Païens. Mais une lecture attentive prouve qu’il s’agit en fait en plutôt d’un livre chrétien écrit à l’usage de ceux qui fréquentent les Païens en général.’ Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 48. By contrast, Kempshall considers the text to be intended for both Christians and pagans. Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History 400-1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 71. Van Nuffelen understands the Historiae as designed to persuade those wavering on the edges of Christianity. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 17–18. See 1.6.1–4, 1:47–8 as a specifc example of how the construct of the addressee is used as rhetorical leverage. Gerard O’Daly, Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 36. See, for example, Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 16–17: ‘The close connection between the City of God and the Historiae, the latter being presented as a supplement of the former, makes it likely that both target a similar audience.’ Also Croke and Emmett, ‘Historiography in Late Antiquity’, 3. Cameron, Last Pagans, especially 792–5. Cameron, Last Pagans, 792. Also O’Daly, A Reader’s Guide, 36: ‘Rather than seeing the City of God as refutation of pagan objections to Christianity, to be read directly by pagans, it is more in keeping with what Augustine actually says about his aims to think of the work’s readers as Christians or others closely concerned with Christianity, who require fuent and convincing rebuttal of pagan views, both for their own satisfaction and as weapons to be used in arguments with defenders of paganism.’ Cameron, Last Pagans, 792. ‘His [Augustine’s] primary audience must have been Christians, many of them recent converts, most as yet unbaptized, whose motives and sincerity alike were suspect.’ Averil Cameron, ‘Jews and Heretics: A Category Error?’, in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 350. By contrast, Marincola sees a clear distinction in audience between classical and Christian historiography. Marincola, Authority and Tradition, 33. For ‘false’ Christians, see 1.8.14, 1:52. Cameron, Last Pagans, 792. Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 48. In a similar vein, see Garry W. Trompf: ‘...one comes to realize that there is no point worrying over the distinction between the work Orosius had to write and the work he might have written had he not been charged by Augustine: he produced what he wanted to write (and his nervousness at the end about what his mentor will think of the result...only goes to confrm his self-acknowledged independence)’. Garry W. Trompf, ‘Consolations of History under the Declining Western Empire: Sulpicius and Orosius’, in Early Christian Historiography: Narratives of Retributive Justice (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), 299. Augustine, Epistula 166 to Jerome, 1.2: Ecce venit ad me religiosus iuvenis, catholica pace frater, aetate flius, honore compresbyter noster Orosius, vigil ingenio, promptus eloqui, fagrans studio... Christian Tornau, Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie: Augustins Argumentationstechnik in De civitate Dei und ihr Bildungsgeschichtlicher Hintergrund.

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97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105 106 107

108

109

110

111

45

Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 82 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 110. Tornau, Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie, 115. Tornau, Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie, 116. Tornau, Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie, 115. The narrative voice and Orosius in the Old English tradition is discussed briefy by Deborah VanderBilt, ‘Translation and Orality in the Old English Orosius’, Oral Tradition 13 (1998): 379–80. Jordanes, Getica 9.58. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:xiii. Recognized by Adolf Lippold, Le Storie contro i pagani (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1976), 1:xxv n8. According to Theodore Von Mörner, Orosius’ full name was ‘Paulus Orosius Hormistas’ or ‘Paulus Hormistas Orosius’ or even ‘Paulus Hormistas Mundus’. Theodore Von Mörner, De Orosii vita eiusque Historiarum libris septem adversus paganos (Berlin: Sumptibus Auctoris, 1844), 180–1. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:xiii–xiv. Alistair Campbell, The Tollemache Orosius (British Museum Additional MS.47967) (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1953), 13. Katrina B. Olds, Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 101–2. A more recent example is David Rohrbacher’s reconstruction of the life of Orosius, with speculation about the date of his birth, country of origin, and manner of death, all of which is unsubstantiated by historical detail. David Rohrbacher, ‘Orosius’, in The Historians of Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2002), 135–7. Arnaud-Lindet opens the introduction to her critical edition with an extended discussion of the biography of Orosius, including a reconstruction of the dates of the composition of the Historiae. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:ix–xx. See also Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 29–40. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 15: ‘Scholars have been tempted to fll in the canvas of Orosius’ life, even going so far as to draw a psychological portrait of Orosius based on certain passages, in particular the preface.’ See Marrou for an understanding of the Prologue to the Historiae as biographical. Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 67. 5.1.14–16, 2:85: Olim cum bella toto Orbe fervebant, quaeque provincia suis regibus suis legibus suisque moribus utebatur, nec erat societas adfectionum ubi dissidebat diversitas postestatum... Si quis igitur tunc acerbitate malorum victus patriam cum hoste deseruit, quem tandem ignotum locum ignotus adiit? quam gentum generaliter hostem hostis oravit? cui se congressu primo credidit, non societate nominis invitatus, non communione iuris adductus, non religionis unitate securus? See also 3.20.6–8, 2:173, which has similarly been interpreted as refecting actual events in the life of Orosius. 5.2.1–2, 2:86: Mihi autem prima qualiscumque motus perturbatione fugienti, quia de confugiendi statione securo, ubique patria, ubique lex et religio mea est. Nunc me Africa tam libenter excepit quam confdenter accessi...nunc ultro ad suscipiendos socios religionis et pacis suae benivola voluntate gremium pandit atque ultro fessos, quos foveat, invitat. 5.2.3–5, 2:86–7: Latitudo orientis, septentrionis copiositas, meridiana diffusio, magnarum insularum largissimae tutissimaeque sedes mei iuris et nominis sunt quia ad Christianos et Romanos Romanus et Christianus accedo...unus Deus...ab omnibus et diligitur et timetur; eaedem leges, quae uni Deo subiectae sunt, ubique dominantur; ubicumque ignotus accessero, repentinam vim tamquam destitutus non pertimesco.

46 Orosius as a writer of history 112 5.2.8, 2:87: Haec sunt nostrorum temporum bona: quae in totum vel in tranquillitate praesentium vel in spe futurorum vel in perfugio communi non habuere maiores... 113 The tensions and inconsistencies of the text are recognized by Henry Chadwick in his review of Hans-Werner Goetz’s monograph on Orosius: ‘As an exponent of a Christian reading of world history, Orosius is more complex than may appear. …e.g., the love-hate relation both to Rome and its Empire on the one hand, and to the barbarians on the other; or the argument that the disasters being endured now are providentially mild compared with those of the Roman republic. The present is idealized at the expense of the past.’ Henry Chadwick, Review of Die Geschichtstheologie des Orosius, by Hans-Werner Goetz, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33, no. 1 (1982): 59. 114 5.1.3–4, 2:82: Ecce quam feliciter Roma vincit tam infeliciter quidquid extra Romam est vincitur. Quanti igitur pendenda est gutta haec laboriosae felicitatis, cui adscribitur unius urbis beatitudo in tanta mole infelicitatis, per quam agitur totius Orbis eversio? 115 Book 5 functions as an extended diatribe against the concept of war. See especially 5.24.9–21, 2:150–3. For more on war and postcoloniality, see Chapter 4, 113–20. 116 1.12.1, 1:59: At ego nunc cogor fateri me prospiciendi fnis commodo de tanta malorum saeculi circumstantia praeterire plurima, cuncta breviare. Nequaquam enim tam densam aliquando silvam praetergredi possem, nisi etiam crebris interdum saltibus subvolarem. 117 3 Preface 1, 1:134: Et superiore iam libro contestatus sum et nunc necessarie repeto secundum praeceptum tuum de anteactis confictationibus saeculi... 118 3.4.6, 1:145: Vber nunc quidem mihi iste doloris atque increpationis locus est, sed in quo iam reverentia tua studium sapientiae et veritatis exercuit, mihi super eo audere fas non est. Commonuisse me satis sit et ex qualibet intentione lectorem ad illius lectionis plenitudinem remisisse. 119 Giuseppi Zecchini, ‘Latin Historiography: Jerome, Orosius and the Western Chronicles’, in Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century AD, ed. by Gabriele Marasco (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 328–9. 120 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 164. The creation of new genres in late antiquity is briefy contextualized by André Basson, ‘A Transformation of Genres in Late Latin Literature: Classical Literary Tradition and Ascetic Ideals in Paulinus of Nola’, in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. by Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith S. Sivan (Ashgate, Surrey: Variorum, 1996), 276. 121 For a discussion of Orosius’s theory of the four empires synthesized with the four compass points, see Hervé Inglebert, Interpretatio christiana: les mutations des savoirs (cosmographie, géographie, ethnographie, histoire) dans l’Antiquité chrétienne (30-630 après J.-C.) (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 2001), 360–2. 122 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 164; Michael Whitby, Review of The Historians of Late Antiquity, by David Rohrbacher, The Classical Review 53, no. 2 (2003): 389; Matthews, Ammianus, 6. 123 Merrills follows Riese in arguing that Orosius’s geography was confated with sections of Julius Honorius’s Cosmographia and circulated from the ffth century as the Cosmographia of pseudo-Aethicus. Alexander Riese, Geographi latini minores (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964 [1878]), 24–55. Naomi Reed Kline understands that the earliest manuscript of pseudo-Aethicus dates from the eighth century. Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 58n14. Natalia Lozovsky identifes three manuscripts dating before the eleventh century that contained only the geographical chapter. Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Earth Is Our Book’: Geographical

Orosius as a writer of history

47

Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 77n46. See further Janet M. Bately and D. J. A. Ross, ‘A Check List of Manuscripts of Orosius’ “Historiarum adversum paganos libri septem”’, Scriptorium 25 (1961): 329–34, and L. B. Mortensen, ‘Orosius and Justinus in One Volume: Post-Conquest Books Across the Channel’, Cahiers de l’institut du moyen-âge grec et latin 60 (1990): 389–99; ‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories in the Middle Ages: A List of Orosius, Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus, and Landolfus Sagax Manuscripts’, Filologia Mediolatina 6–7 (1999–2000): 101–200; L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 197–9. 124 Lozovosky, The Earth Is Our Book, 78n47. 125 The manuscript on vellum, Latinae linguae elegantiarum compendium, dates from c.1455 and is held in the Folger Shakespeare Library (V.a.102). 126 As seen in the incunabulum KW 171 A 21, printed in Paris for Antoine Vérard and held in the Nationale Bibliotheek van Nederland.

2

The making of time

Introduction If the Historiae has a principal purpose, it is the ordering of the past.1 The Historiae casts its vision over more than 5,600 years and orders the events of history according to its own typology.2 The grand scope of Orosius’s Christianizing vision has led to the Historiae being described as the frst universal Christian history.3 It details how empires rise and fall, how historical events work in parallel with one another, and it positions landmarks of global human activity in relation to the foundation of the city of Rome and the Incarnation of Christ. The Incarnation is the ultimate measure of history, around which the past gathers, the present is understood, and the future determined. The computation of the past in these purposeful ways underpins Orosius’s agenda, to promote Christianity through the comparison of times.4 The Historiae was designed to prove that the coming of Christ was providential and that the lived experience of humankind since has been ever improving. The pagan past has actually been much worse than the troubled Christian present; the further temporally from the birth of Christ, the more ‘horribly wretched’ time was (atrocius miseros, Prologue 14, 1:9). Orosius writes mainly Roman history but with a strongly Christian agenda. Time is the principal tool Orosius uses to fulfl his task; the Historiae displays an acute awareness of time, and there are strong divisions between the past, present, and future. Anke Walter argues that ‘[h]ardly any ancient text…is as insistently situated in the chronological progress of linear time as that of Orosius’.5 This chapter examines Orosius’s innovative organization of time in two sections. Part one explores the philosophy of time, examining abstract notions of the periodization, division, and continuation of time. It concentrates on the organization of world history around empire, with the rise and fall of the Babylonian, Macedonian, and Carthaginian empires culminating in the Roman empire, which is preordained for the coming of Christ. Part two focuses on Orosius’s specifc dating and systems for recording time. It examines his technical dating and explores how numerous methods such

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599120-3

The making of time 49 as ab urbe condita (‘from the founding of the City’) as well as consular and Olympiad dating are synthesized into Christian history.

Part one: dividing the past In his Confessiones, Augustine approached time as a philosophical concept (quid est enim tempus, 11.14). His refexive and contemplative thoughts had a signifcant intellectual impact and enduring legacy, but his philosophical approach was not replicated in Orosius’s Historiae.6 Orosius does not pause to interrogate the concept or consider time from a personal perspective; instead, his understanding of time is unselfconscious, and he plunges time into polemic rather than philosophy. At the outset of the work, Orosius immediately commences his attack, criticizing those pagan writers who, in their ‘blind opinion’ (opinione caeca, 1.1.2, 1:10), have not acknowledged the creation of the world as the beginning of time.7 Orosius did not stop to wonder if he knew what time was, or if he could offer a comprehensible and rational explanation to his reader. Nevertheless, time is the frame of the Historiae, riveted together by relative dating and forming a solid yet unobtrusive structure. It is presented as accurately divisible and organized by fxed axis points. In this sense, Orosian time is comparable with the infexible and universal modern concept of absolute time.8 The perception of time in the Historiae is not a passive act; it is both interested and directed. It is for the author to decide what the defnitive moments of history are, those that will break the continuity of the narrative and change the direction of time. In the Prologue, Orosius sets out the instructions he received from Augustine for the composition of the text, that he should reach backwards into the past through histories and annals, documenting natural disasters, wars, and the shameful actions of humanity on a universal scale and covering all periods of history (Prologue 10–11, 1:4). Orosius sets out his intention to begin with the creation (ab orbe condita) and continue up to the present day (usque ad dies nostros, 1.1.14, 1:12), approximately 417 CE. He calculates a total of 5,199 years from the Creation to the birth of Christ, a precise dating scheme which gives authority to the division and subdivision of history.9 One of the principal innovations of the Historiae is to encompass this vast swathe of history. Although the text is not strictly annalistic – it does not set out all events occurring within each year – it does to some extent operate within the chronographical tradition, following Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon. A. T. Fear understands that the Chronicon forms the spine of the Historiae.10 Orosius’s version of history is successive, rather than cyclical; one thing happens after another, presented in the text in a chronological fashion.11 The narrative pattern of the Historiae is human sin and God’s punishment in endless repetitions and irregular intervals that punctuate the passage of time from the beginning with the Creation to the end with the Apocalypse.12 In so doing, Orosius creates a single temporal series of all human history within a broad political chronology that focuses on the collective rather

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than the individual. Every single aspect of this expansive, ‘universal’ history is directed by the divine providence of God. This innovation in genre of universal Christian history demanded new temporal division and dating. In other works of history where events recorded occurred in relative proximity to each other, separated only by a few years, an absolute system of dating was not necessarily required. This is demonstrated in an important source for the Historiae, Pompeius Trogus’s Philippic History, usually dated to the reign of Augustus and transmitted through the Epitome of Justin. The work circumvents the need for a regularized means of dating through a prepositional style of language. Events are connected by linking words and phrases, such as ‘Meanwhile’, ‘After a long time and many adventures’, ‘After a number of years’.13 By contrast, Orosius’s universal temporal and spatial objective to cover all ages in a synthesis of history meant that a systematic scheme for absolute dating was essential. The universal aspect of the text assumes such prominence that a concentration on individual places or peoples at a local level is effaced. As Natalia Lozovsky argues: Among these global concerns, Orosius gives comparatively little attention to individual places. General trends and connections seem to interest him more than concrete locations. Describing the events of Eastern and Greek history, he uses a broad stroke more often than a minute touch, and he speaks of the conquests and movements of his characters in general terms of continents and provinces rather than in specifc cities or landscape features.14 Orosius’s large-scale tendency obscures local experiences of time. He does not use local calendars or alternative local dating schemes such as the Hispanic Era, which was used in Hispania to date from 38 BCE following Augustus’s conquest there.15 Marrou emphasizes the authorial position of omniscience, that Orosius knows the whole story, the ‘burdens of war or ravages of disease or sorrows of famine or horrors of earthquakes or of unusual foods or dreadful outbreaks of miseries caused by parricides and shameful deeds’ (Prologue 10–11, 1:4), before it begins.16 Yet, as much as Orosius claims to offer an overarching vision of past, present, and future, his strong apologetic roots history in his particular cultural, spatial, and religious position. For this reason, critics have searched the Historiae for evidence of Orosius’s own life, assuming that macro history can elucidate micro history.17 This is most commonly done in Book 5, where Orosius’s construction of a Christian identity formulated around the idea of being a political refugee feeing hostile invasion is usually interpreted as a biographical detail (5.2.1– 4, 2:86). But as Rousseau argues, the exercise of the historical imagination is fundamentally a literary and ‘fctive’ exercise, in the technical sense that

The making of time 51 people were not merely observing events but were constructing narratives.18 Understanding the scope of Orosius’s universalism thus limits how far we can read personal biography into the Historiae.19 Beginnings The Historiae opens with a claim that the text is explicitly orientated around time. The history of mankind (homines) will be traced from the origin of the world (mundi originem) and the beginning of man’s sin, original sin (1.1.2–4, 1:5).20 The Historiae is divided into four sections: the frst runs from the Creation of humankind to the reign of Ninus of Babylon; the second starts with Ninus and proceeds to the foundation of Rome; the third moves from the foundation of Rome to the accession of Augustus; and fnally the fourth covers the period from the reign of Augustus to Orosius’s own day. The text is positioned in opposition to earlier pagan authors, those Greek and Latin writers (Graecos…Latinos, 1.1.1, 1:10) who do not recognize the creation of mankind or origin of the world.21 As Mary Kate Hurley observes, Orosius argues against contemporary non-Christians who cannot correctly interpret the past because they cannot appreciate the inevitability of a future that is destined by the divine.22 According to them, it is as if the human race lived like animals before being shaken awake to a new understanding (1.1.1–4, 1:10). Orosius attacks the Greek and Latin historiographic tradition by claiming that the reign of the Assyrian king Ninus is their starting point, and that they blindly believe that the world and mankind were without beginning. The criticism has been interpreted as directed against the cyclical view of history, as opposed to a linear progression of time.23 Rosamond McKitterick has emphasized the signifcance of the scriptural beginnings of Creation (Genesis 1:1, and John 1:1) for early Christian thinkers and later medieval commentators in shaping perceptions of the past in the early medieval west.24 All except two of the thirty-two ‘major “world chronicles”’ written between the third and the tenth centuries begin with the Creation; the exceptions are Eusebius’s Chronicon and its continuation by Jerome.25 McKitterick differentiates Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon from Orosius’s Historiae because the Chronicon starts from the reign of Ninus and the birth of Abraham.26 Ninus functions as an important exemplar in the Historiae; he is the frst king of the Assyrian or Babylonian empire, and his reign establishes the model of kingship, which is founded on power and warfare.27 Orosius does not replicate the Chronicon’s dating system ab Abraham, dating instead from the foundation of Rome, which is followed by  the Old English Historiae. Orosius’s historical narrative gathers pace with the reign of Ninus (1.4, 1:43–5).28 Nevertheless, Orosius’s centralization of the Creation in opposition to previous historiographical approaches was highly signifcant and infuential, as the later chronicling tradition demonstrates. Orosius was deliberately forging a new path, and working in opposition to the literary culture he was operating within.29

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Orosius rejects the inherited tradition of pagan history (historiographis, 1.1.5, 1:10) because of its insuffcient representation of time: frst, that 3,184 years from the Creation to the reign of Ninus have been ignored; and secondly, that from Ninus to the rule of Augustus 2,015 years of history have passed, ‘in which between the men of action and those who wrote about them, the fruit of labours and occupations of all were wasted’ (1.1.6, 1:6).30 The period of 3,184 years between Creation and Ninus is a number derived from Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon.31 The date is calculated by totalling the 2,242 years from the creation of humanity to the Flood and 942 years from the Flood to the birth of Abraham, who is reconceived as a protoChristian.32 This becomes the main point from which dates are calculated in the Chronicon, expressed as A Abr., ‘From Abraham’.33 The Chronicon offers the event of the birth of Abraham concurrently with the reign of Ninus and the kingship of the Assyrians as a starting point, as does the historical narrative preserved in the Historiae.34 But Orosius’s decision to begin his universal history at the point of Creation rather than the precedent of monarchy intentionally and signifcantly differentiates the Historiae. Orosius has broken and unravelled the circle of time to create the linear thread of history. Orosius positions the Historiae as responding to the defciency of earlier writers, turning instead to the authority of Christian Scripture and to the Creation, beginning at a beginning without a past (1.1.7–9, 1:11). Orosius locates the narrative of the origin of the world and beginning of time exclusively within Scripture, replacing the authority of pagan historical writing with the Old Testament and aligning his work with biblical rather than pagan models. Martin Heinzelmann has noted the signifcance of Orosius’s historiographical decision: Such an approach claimed a superiority for Christian historiography because of its greater completeness and, like the biblical writings, conferred an eminent moral context on the historiography: the creation of Adam, that is, the beginning of history, coincided with the Fall.35 Predating the Historiae to begin at the point of Creation rather than Abraham or Ninus correlates with the more general trend in the Historiae of a broadening out, extending the scope of the text in terms of time and space, and in association with the providential infuence of the Christian God on all of history. Orosius’s claim that the Old Testament is proved to be more credible by its reliable prediction of future events, particularly the coming of Christ, pointedly demonstrates the superiority of Scripture over the pagan account of time before Abraham and Ninus (1.1.7–9, 1:11). Pagan history cannot be relied upon to cover the past adequately or accurately; conversely, Christian Scripture is comprehensive not only of earlier time but also of the future. Orosius self-consciously differentiates his historiography from faulty earlier works, claiming that previous writers began in the wrong place,

The making of time 53 establishing their narratives in the midst of history and neglecting earlier times: ‘What, then, prevents our unfolding the beginning of this story, the main body of which others have described, and demonstrating, by a very brief account, that earlier ages which were much more numerous endured similar miseries?’ (1.1.13, 1:6–7).36 This important justifcation explains why the vast majority of the text focuses on time preceding the revelation of Christianity. In seven books of history, it is not until the middle of Book 6 that the Incarnation takes place.37 This resists the expectation that a Christian author would favour the period following the birth of Christ as the most important. History is written backwards, towards a signifcant event. The Historiae is no exception, the signifcant event in this case being the Incarnation of Christ. An alternative approach would have been to relegate the span of time before the advent of Christ as a dark period of irreligion and martial confict, and focus solely on the amelioration of events subsequent to the Christian era. But Orosius’s innovation to predate the text not only allowed the broadening of its audience but also enabled Orosius to give a new ideological interpretation to a period of history previously ignored by Christian writers.38 The Historiae sees the deconstruction of empire in the frst six books before its reconstruction once Augustus and Christ have assumed their positions in the narrative, literally rewriting history from a Christian perspective. The structuring of time in the Historiae is a central feature of this reframing of the past; where time has been traditionally dated using the regnal years of kings, Orosius offers alternative Christian events as chronological signposts, such as the reign of Ninus with the birth of Abraham, or the closing of the gates of Janus under the Emperor Augustus with the birth of Christ: Now from Adam, the frst man, to the King Ninus, so-called the ‘Great’, when Abraham was born, 3,184 years passed…from Ninus or Abraham to Caesar Augustus, that is, to the birth of Christ, which was in the forty-second year of the Caesar’s rule, when the Gates of Janus were closed, for peace had been made with the Parthians and wars had ceased in the whole world, 2,015 years have passed. (1.1.5–7, 1:5–6)39 We have seen how Orosius challenges the legitimacy of the reign of Ninus as a starting point for history writing in antiquity, and the further denigration of Ninus, ‘so-called the “Great”’, prepares the way for Orosius to effectively replace Ninus as a marker of historiography with the birth of Abraham. These two fgures can be used interchangeably as temporal markers (‘from Ninus or Abraham’). Similarly, the birth of Christ is given the secular point of reference of the reign of Augustus. Orosius contextualizes the birth of Christ with a considerable level of detail of parallel events: in the forty-second year of Augustus’s rule, following peace with Parthia and a universal peace, and the closure of the gates of Janus, which comes 2,015 years after Ninus. This is the

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frst time that the association between the birth of Christ and the beginning of the Roman empire with the end of war and the establishment of universal peace is made, and it assumes a continued signifcance in the text. The provision of alternative ‘sacred’ occurrences to ‘secular’ events can be understood as indicative of a wider ideological reinterpretation of history, providing an alternative Christianized version of time. Within the frst book, Orosius discusses three times how he intends to structure the Historiae. The frst instance is represented as a response to the ignorance of other writers, positioning his work as more comprehensive and therefore superior (1.1.1–7, 1:10–11). Time is explicitly organized around individual fgures in history: Adam; Ninus and Abraham; Christ and Augustus. Second, Orosius describes how the entire opus fts a tripartite division: Therefore, I intend to speak of the period from the founding of the world to the founding of the City; then up to the principate of Caesar and the birth of Christ, from which time the control of the world has remained under the power of the City, down even to our own time. (1.1.14, 1:7)40 The division is not distributed evenly in the text, as has been noted, and Orosius’s historiographical intention is inherently Romano-centric.41 From the beginning of the world as the starting point, the text moves on to the founding of the city of Rome, then up to the beginning of the Roman empire and birth of Christ, down to the present time, under which continues the universal dominance of Rome. Lozovsky recognizes the importance of Orosius’s statement, which demonstrates his view of the deep connection between historical events and the places where they occurred…he ties the story of the world and the story of man…to the story of the physical earth and the story of the human institution most important to Orosius – the Roman Empire.42 According to Lozovsky this passage expresses Orosius’s ‘concept of history’, that ‘the earth or the world is destined to be controlled by the City…and to accept Christianity’.43 Orosius’s statement does more than that; it neatly encapsulates the historiographical approach in structuring the Historiae, where the division between the origin of the world and Orosius’s own time is bisected by the beginning of the Roman empire and the Incarnation of Christ. In this organization, the dominance of Rome is immediately apparent, reinforced by the acknowledgement of the universal hegemony the empire still operates. These two approaches, the frst where history is organized around individual fgures, and the second where time is divided in a tripartite structure, are distinct from the third and fnal approach Orosius sets out in the frst book. This is articulated in spatial and geopolitical terms:

The making of time 55 …frst I shall describe the world itself which the human race inhabits, as it was divided by our ancestors into three parts and then established by regions and provinces, in order that when the locale of wars and the ravages of diseases are described, all interested may more easily obtain knowledge, not only of the events of their time, but also their location. (1.1.16–17, 1:7)44 The ancient perspective of the world comprising Asia, Africa, and Europe transmitted by writers such as Herodotus, Pliny, and Pomponius Mela is readily accepted and replicated.45 This organization of space saw the Mediterranean at the heart of the scheme, with the subsequent hierarchy of regions, provinces, rulers, and the population. Jonathan Shepard has noted that Orosius’s methodology is not original except in the way it consistently views the world from east to west, recognizing the Christian importance of this orientation towards the Holy Land.46 With this exception, it must be observed how neglected the Christian signifcance of the east is in the Historiae. In favouring the division of the world based on the classical model of three continents, Orosius deliberately neglects the tripartite division of the world in Genesis where Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are ordered by God to ‘fll the earth’, a division which is used by Sulpicius Severus.47 The Holy Land and the geographical context for the life of Jesus is pointedly elided. This not only conforms to Orosius’s version of Christian historiography that derives from secular rather than scriptural models, but it also reorientates the narrative of history towards the west in the translation of empire from Babylon to Rome. Orosius’s explicit intention at 1.1.15–17, 1:12 to structure history in physical terms, with the inhabited world divided into Asia, Africa, and Europe and further divided by regions and provinces, is fundamental to understanding the geographical description of the world that immediately follows (1.1.16, 1:12). Orosius’s textual mapping of the known world in the opening chapters frames the Historiae, contextualizing the narrative of history within a spatial environment. As a precursor to the historical narrative, Orosius describes the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, detailing their regions and natural features such as rivers, seas, and mountain ranges. The function of the description is critically contested: Fear understands the description of the world as establishing Orosius’s universalist credentials, but as redundant beyond this.48 Lozovsky notes that ‘the image of the world that emerges from Orosius’ geographical chapter does not directly refect any of the historical themes proclaimed in his statement of intent’. Instead, it provides ‘a broad framework of reference for the following historical events, rather than time-specifc topographical layout’.49 Yves Janvier is much more positive, interpreting the geographical description as an indication that Orosius understood the basic foundations of authentic historiography, chronology, and geography, and the necessity of providing a physical context to the historical narrative of the past that is not a limited or spiritual ideal.50

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The connection between time and space and the function of Orosius’s geographical description of the known world is illuminated by the link to time in the crucial fnal sentence of the Prologue: ‘all interested may more easily obtain knowledge, not only of the events of their time, but also their location’ (1.1.17, 1:7).51 The geographical description enables the expansion of space, enriching time by allowing multiple narratives to be developed simultaneously. This combats what Peter Munz terms ‘the depressing experience of deprivation through time’, that is, the unilateral narrative of time where one event replaces another.52 Through the geographical description of the world, Orosius achieves the layering of time in the stratifcation of the narrative even within his representation of time as linear and directed by progress.53 The unfolding of space that broadens time is characterized in the text by the language of temporal transition, link words such as interea, ‘in the meantime’ (4.10.5, 2:37); tunc, ‘at that time’ (3.13.5, 1:158); eodem tempore, ‘at the same time’ (4.21.4, 2:69); post hoc, ‘after this’ (4.13.15, 2:45); sed dum haec [Darius] agit…, ‘Now, while [Darius] was accomplishing these things…’ (3.16.11, 1:166). In this way, the extension of time is achieved through the expansion of space, and it is therefore possible to represent multiple events happening at the same time in different places. The Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome has the same objective, but it is achieved through a different aesthetic. Division of empire The partition of time in Book 1 through periodization demarcated by individual fgures and the physical division of the world is further extended by a broader and more comprehensive categorization of time, history, and space, in the rise and fall of empire.54 Orosius’s theory of translatio imperii, where the successive empires of Babylon, Macedonia, Africa, and Rome assumed power, not only provides an important structure to the narrative but it also helps to demonstrate the apologetic of the text.55 The theory was designed to prove that the frst empire Babylon was the predecessor ultimately to Rome, one empire fourishing at the beginning of times, the other at the end (2.1.4– 5, 1:84). The idea that Rome was founded in the year of Assyria’s downfall can be found in Ennius, and has been understood to have been reproduced in Varro and subsequently Augustine.56 Despite the secular presentation of the scheme of four successive empires in the Historiae, it is often claimed that it originates in the Old Testament’s Book of Daniel (2:28–46). This is questioned by Joseph Ward Swain: Orosius nowhere associates this philosophy with Daniel – he does not even record the celebrated dream and vision – and, while he knew Jerome personally and used Justin as his principal source for secular history, his arrangement of the empires, including Carthage, indicates that he learned this philosophy of history elsewhere.57

The making of time 57 The typology of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel concerning the four kingdoms is not directly quoted by Orosius, but plays an important role, as it constitutes the logical and chronological framework of the Historiae.58 The Book of Daniel offers an eschatological vision of King Nebuchadnezzar of a statue made up of four parts, interpreted as four successive kingdoms that will rule over the world (Daniel 2:28–46). The signifcance of this philosophy of history for both pagan and Christian writers has been well established in an important article by Swain.59 The usual interpretation of the four kingdoms in later historiography is that they refer to the Babylonian, Mede-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires.60 Orosius’s reinterpretation enabled a more western focus for the Historiae: the Persian and Babylonian empires are telescoped into one empire, with Macedonia as the second empire, which allowed for the African or Carthaginian empire to take third place, naturally securing Rome’s place as successor to Carthage and the fnal empire.61 As Fear concludes, the end result of Orosius’s revised chronology remained unaltered, but his ‘new explanation of the vision would have seemed a far more credible version of historical development to his Roman readers than those offered by previous Christian interpretations, mired as they were in a narrow eastern perspective’.62 The rhythm of the rise and fall of empire gave meaning to history in the Historiae, of ‘steadily increasing strength from kingdom to kingdom and age to age, culminating in the setting of a seal of inescapable glory on the extreme west’.63 The restructuring of time in the Historiae simultaneously achieves a reorientation towards the west in the translation of empire principally from Babylon and ultimately to Rome. This lends strength to Orosius’s polemic, where Rome is not only the fourth and fnal empire but also the chosen empire for the continuation of time. The ordering of time according to the signifcance of empires provides a clear internal structure to the Historiae: Book 1 focuses on Assyria, Books 2 and 3 on Macedonia, Book 4 on Carthage, and Books 5, 6, and 7 on Rome. Orosius extends the function of the four-empire theory by associating the four kingdoms with the four cardinal points of the compass. By the hidden design of divine providence, as there are four cardinal points so there are four empires that occupy distinct historical stages: the Babylonian kingdom in the east, the Carthaginian in the south, the Macedonian in the north, and the Roman in the west (2.1.5, 1:84–5). This rhetorical discourse enables the universalism of the text, but also the hegemony of the Roman empire and Christianity: So in the seven hundred and ffty-second year after the founding of the City, Caesar Augustus, when from the East to the West, from the North to the South, and over the entire circuit of the Ocean all nations were arranged in a single peace. (6.22.1, 2:280)64 The breadth of the East, the vastness of the North, the extensiveness of the South, and the very large and secure seats of the great islands are

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Once the correlation between the kingdoms and compass points has been established, the implication of the hegemony of Rome and Christianity over all other previous empires and religions is pervasive. The association between the west, Christianity, and Rome is demonstrated in the passage from Book 5 excerpted above (5.2.3, 2:176) where the west is absent from the list of the four points of the world but implied by the geographical context of Orosius’s western perspective and identity as a Roman and Christian. While the four empires provide an effective structure to the Historiae, Orosius emphasizes the frst and last empires, Babylon and Rome. Like Augustine, Orosius pares down the four-empire theory into two, creating a more streamlined concept of inheritance and succession based on an East– West model. Augustine refers to Rome as the ‘second Babylon’ and expects Rome to exert a universal hegemony as the successor of Babylon in the translatio imperii, the ‘translation of empire’.66 The Assyrian or Babylonian empire functions as a point of comparison to Rome, as a device to demonstrate the superiority of the divinely chosen Roman empire when compared to the faws and failings of Babylon. According to Garry Trompf, the medieval theory of translatio between empires begins with the Historiae: ‘It was in fact Orosius’ representation of the two supreme and two “guardian” empires, as well as his account of the imperial inheritance, which formed the basis for what is known as medieval translatio theory.’67 Using the metaphor of the family, Babylon is represented as an elderly father to the little son of Rome, and the intervening kingdoms of Africa and Macedonia are protectors and guardians (2.1.6, 2:85). The rise of Rome at the expense of Babylon is specifcally expressed in geographical terms, with the fall of the east and the rise of the west: Indeed, at one and the same accord of time, the one fell, the other arose; the one, at the time, frst endured the domination of foreigners; the other, at that time, also frst rejected the haughtiness of her own princes; the one, at that time like a person at the door of death, left an inheritance; but the other, then attaining maturity recognized itself as the heir; at that time the power of the East fell, that of the West rose. (2.2.10–11, 1:47)68 The rhythm of history in the succession of events is integrated with the synchronization of empire in order to illustrate the omnipotence of the Christian God, that all events are directed by divine providence.69 The reduction of time into a single linear series of events makes the infuence of the divine more clearly visible, a perspective enabled by the idea of successive empires.

The making of time 59 Time and decline The rise and fall of empire incorporates a theme constantly returned to, of the vicissitudes of time and the mutability of human affairs. In Book 6, this is related specifcally to Rome: …the status of Rome is constantly disturbed by alternating changes and is like the level of the Ocean, which is different every day, and is raised for seven days by increases growing less daily, and in the same number of days is drawn back by the natural loss and internal absorption. (6.14.1, 2:257)70 Human institutions will inevitably fail, and only that which is ordained by God is secure and lasting. The Babylonian empire is the ultimate example of this philosophy, which is why Orosius simultaneously recognizes the ‘greatness’ of Babylon before recounting the rhetorical narrative that sees the demolition of that empire. Babylon demonstrates that human existence is transitory, as empires reach their peak and immediately decline, passing on to succeeding empires. As long as there have been empires, there has been anxiety about their decline, and current debates about the longevity of the Roman empire infuence the Historiae. This image of extreme pessimism is reasonably rare in the Historiae; it is not often that Orosius defers so wholeheartedly to the omnipotent power of God at the expense of man, nor allows the front of optimism to slip in the admittance of doubt about the future of Rome. Ancient literature commonly articulated the concern of an empire reaching its greatest extent before declining using the metaphor of a life cycle. These features are often attributed to a ‘pagan’ approach to the division of time.71 It is possible to interpret this passage as Orosius’s acknowledgement of the pagan attack against Christianity following the sack of Rome. It is ‘our people’ (nostri) who ‘with unrestrained anxiety’ (incircumspecta anxietate) debate the destruction or survival of the Roman empire (2.6.14, 1:98). The need to account for crisis is answered by Orosius in pessimistic terms, that history has proved the instability of human institutions, and only that which is ordained by God has any permanence. Orosius’s apologetic approach to pagan accusations against Christianity is demonstrated here by the short shrift they are given. Specifc accusations are avoided, while implicitly the entire text functions as a response to hostile criticism. The parallelism between Babylon and Rome is exemplifed not only in the rise of these empires but also in their crucially different ends. Their synchronization is demonstrated in literal terms, relying on the calculation of the number of years the two empires ruled and were challenged in that rule. Orosius calculates that it was 1,164 years after its foundation that Babylon was despoiled by the Medes (2.3.2, 1:88). It was after the same number of years that Rome suffered the Gothic sack and was similarly ‘despoiled of

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her riches’ (2.3.3, 1:46).72 But Rome was not deprived of her sovereignty, and rules unsubdued (2.3.3, 1:88).73 Orosius juxtaposes the examples of the successful usurpation of Babylonian power by Arbatus and the unsuccessful usurpation of Roman authority by Attalus, who was proclaimed emperor by the Gothic leader Alaric in 409 CE (2.3.4, 1:88). The crucial difference between the fallen power of Babylon and the continuing dominance of Rome is centred on imperial authority, now Christianized (2.3.7, 1:89).74 Orosius juxtaposes examples from the past with the present in order to sustain his argument in favour of Christianity, clearly articulated by the claim that the parallelism between Rome and Babylon was decreed by God (2.3.4, 1:88). The synchronism of events is a historiographical construction that allows Orosius to drive forward his apologetical reasoning, and liberates him from the constraints of the documentation of historical facts, accurate dates, or the chronological ordering of time. Orosius uses patterns of recurrent time within history and the rise and fall of empire to prove God’s providence in history, but also to highlight his authorial position as one of privilege and omniscience. The historiographical division of time is determined by the providential design of God, which is underpinned by Christian truths that are universally accepted: that the Christian Creation narrative is known universally; that the sin of man effects punishment; that God, in his love for mankind, regulates and orders humanity through his divine foreknowledge of the future. From this, Orosius concludes another universal truth, that that ‘all power and the order of everything are from God; both those who have not read feel, and those who have read recognize’ (2.1.3, 1:44).75 The dichotomy between knowing (cognoscere) through revelation and empirical observation through reading (legere) implies a scriptural foundation for the religious beliefs Orosius is advocating, an ignorance which he suggests is not automatically prevented by not actually reading Scripture. Underpinned by these Christian certainties, Orosius’s subsequent division of time through empire is shown to derive solely from God, with political division between states necessitating that one empire rule over all (2.1.3–5, 1:84–5). Trompf perceives the distinctive role of empire in connection with divine providence, which is confrmed by patterns of recurrence, by duplicated time lapses too remarkable to be coincidental, and by the repeated appearance and dissolution of the great states.76 The political dominion of ‘empire’ receives divine sanction, and Orosius fnds Christian meaning in the entirety of time in the providential infuence of God on human affairs. The Historiae establishes God as the auctor temporum, ‘the author of Time’ (1.3.4, 1:42). The terrestrial authority of empires and leaders is ultimately dependent on and enabled by the Christian God. This is reinforced in Book 7 by the justifcation Orosius offers within the affrmation of empire, specifcally Babylon and Rome, that God is the one ruler of all ages, kingdoms, and places (7.2.8, 3:18). Orosius’s discourse on time functions ultimately to prove the divine infuence of God on all of history, specifcally

The making of time 61 through the proof of empire that the monotheistic supremacy of the Christian God is established throughout time and place. Continuing time: optimism and the Apocalypse Orosius’s position over the past and present allows him to narrativize time on a grand scale. The rise and decline of empires and the mutability of human affairs preoccupy the whole of his narrative, and are projected forward into the future. The anticipation of continuing time underpins Orosius’s historiographical calibration, but that does not necessarily discount an expectation of the Apocalypse. As Arnaldo Momigliano observed, a universal chronology was bound to take into account not only the beginning but also the end of time, and Orosius had to ‘accept or fght a belief in the apocalypse’.77 The overriding theme of improving times in the Historiae has been interpreted as explicitly anti-apocalyptic.78 But a sense of the end of the world is brought to the attention of the reader by intermittent allusion. Orosius suggests that the end may not be far off; Roman civilization is now suffering from ‘the infrmity of old age’ (2.6.13, 1:54), and he perceives himself as ‘positioned at the end of time’ (4.5.12, 2:129).79 According to Brian Daley, these are ‘simply accepted turns of phrase, rhetorical concessions to an established apocalyptic tradition’.80 They accordingly have little effect on Orosius’s interpretation of history or of Christian institutions.81 Although Orosius’s anticipation of the Apocalypse is deliberately vague and elusive, an eschatological expectation of the end of the world does underlie the Historiae. The Apocalypse is explicitly discussed in the Prologue, where Orosius echoes the common understanding that it will be a time of chaos and tribulation. The end of the world is now remote, and includes the appearance of the Antichrist and Christ for the Final Judgement and destruction of the wicked, as predicted in the Scriptures (Prologue 15–16, 1:9). In contrast to most critical interpretations, Trompf reads more meaning into Orosius’s eschatology: he understands the expectation of the Apocalypse as the culmination of Orosius’s historiographical methodology that focuses on the vicissitudes of human affairs. Trompf perceives that this mindset exercised a grip on medieval thought because it linked biblical assumptions about temporal instabilities with continuing expectations of the Apocalypse.82 Babylon is positioned as the empire that rules at the beginning of time, with Rome as the empire that rules at the end (2.3.5, 1:89). Accordingly, Orosius anticipates the destruction of the world within the lifespan of the Roman empire, but the end of the world does not become more imminent if Rome is considered eternal. Unlike Augustine, who invoked the parallel between Babylon and Rome as an example of the transitory nature of the temporal state, Orosius was confdent in the divine permanence of the Christian empire.83 Orosius’s teleological positioning of Rome contradicts the suggestion by Swain that Orosius’s interpretation included a ffth and

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fnal empire.84 Although Swain argues that in Book 7 the ffth empire gradually replaces the fourth, he does not specify what the fnal empire is. The fnal empire is Rome, and any apocalyptic anticipation in the text must therefore be bound up with it. Despite earlier apocalyptic allusions, the denouement of the work in Book 7 does not actively envisage the end of time. Instead, the birth of Christ at the beginning of Book 7 suggests a ‘realized eschatology’, where the hegemony of the Christian Roman empire will continue without the expectation of the end of time. The notion of a ffth empire to replace Rome is introduced with Athaulf’s notorious suggestion to make Gothia out of Romania, with Athaulf as Caesar Augustus: …that he [Athaulf], at frst, was ardently eager to blot out the Roman name and to make the entire Roman Empire that of the Goths alone, and to call it and to make it, to use a popular expression, Gothia instead of Romania, and that he, Athaulf, become what Caesar Augustus had once been. When, however, he discovered from long experience that the Goths, by reason of their unbridled barbarism, could not by any means obey laws…he chose to seek for himself the glory of completely restoring and increasing the Roman name by the forces of the Goths, and to be held by posterity as the author of the restoration of Rome. (7.43.5–7, 3:361–2)85 The Goths are too distant from Romanitas even to obey laws, and they are compelled not to destroy Rome but to work for the restoration of the empire. Rousseau argues that an eschatological fnality was a sign that the future was hard to give a shape to, and that the capacity for optimism had been exhausted. But in fact Orosius’s eschatological premise was the height of optimism, based as it was on the perpetual progress of the Roman empire into eternity.86 Perhaps ironically following the sack of Rome only seven years previously, Orosius’s approach to the destruction of Rome and the end of time gives the western Roman empire a new lease of life, or at least ‘a new mortgage on time’.87

Part two: dating time The Historiae is driven by a preoccupation with chronology, and the principal tool for Orosius’s computation of time is dating. Dating systems are the skeleton of history; without them, there would be no structure to events except for sequential order. A date is intended to signify a particular day, month, or year of an event. But a date is more than this; it is a synchronism, grounded on the correlation between past events.88 Beyond this defnition, there is a distinction between relative dating and a technical chronology. Relative dating locates events within time by sporadic reference to other signifcant events, and a technical chronology organizes time systematically

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where reference to dates is regularized. This distinction is crucial to understanding the chronological innovation of the Historiae, which employs a structural framework of dating. The Romans had no widely accepted method for numbering each year, and the Historiae employs not one but three dating systems: ab urbe condita, consular, and Olympiad dating. Like the Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome, the Historiae offers an attempt at an accurate and comprehensive system of dating all events. The objective to provide comprehensive coverage means that temporal references are frequent; most chapters open with the date according to ab urbe condita or some other method of temporal location. This is part of the process of invented stability, and, as Anke Walter observes, keeps the ‘ticking’ of time constantly present in the reader’s mind.90 Ab urbe condita The Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome uses three main chronological systems of dating: the birth of Abraham, the Olympiads, and the regnal years of kings and emperors. Orosius modifes this arrangement by replacing ab Abraham, ‘From Abraham’, with ab urbe condita (auc), ‘From the Founding of the City’.91 This reorients the potentially Christian reader, forcing the audience to comprehend time through the pagan past. The frst technical date given is in this form: ‘One thousand three hundred years before the founding of the City, Ninus, the frst king of the Assyrians, as my opponents themselves wish to call him, because of his lust for power, waged war abroad’ (1.4.1, 1:21).92 The Historiae dates the foundation of Rome as 752 BCE, but the date varies signifcantly among the ancient sources.93 The more traditional date of 753 BCE originates with Varro. Georges Declercq argues that modern historians prefer the Varronian system, and ‘it is often assumed that this was also the most widely used reckoning among Roman authors’.94 Alan Samuel argues, however, that Varro’s computation of the date was ‘not used as a chronographic basis for history’, and that it is the epoch deriving from the Fasti Capitolini which ‘seems to have had the greatest acceptance in the empire’.95 The absence of a fxed date arrived at through consensus has been highlighted as a reason why ab urbe condita was not used as a chronographic system, an argument that does not account for Orosius’s use of it.96 The birth of Christ, which is itself contested as a date, forms the basis for the dating of the Christian epoch using the anno Domini system.97 Most significantly, it is the choice of 752 BCE that enables Orosius to follow Eusebius and represent Rome’s frst Millennium as celebrated by the frst Christian emperor, Philip the Arab, in accordance with Orosius’s Christianization of Roman history (7.20.1–4, 3:55).98 The Historiae not only dates according to events that occurred after the founding of the City but also to those that predated Rome’s foundation, for example: ‘In the sixty-fourth year before the founding of the City, Sardanapallus, the last of the Assyrian kings, ruled, a man more corrupt than

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any woman’ (1.19.1, 1:38).99 Dating before and after the founding of Rome is fundamental to the chronographic system of the Historiae. A retrospective numerical reference to Rome’s origin opens the majority of the chapters throughout the work. Whereas earlier historiography uses relative and occasional dating to the foundation of Rome, the Historiae’s chronological systematization of time in a comprehensive dating system is founded on auc. The regularity of dating signals the realism of the historical narrative, in the intention to record ‘real’ rather than ‘mythical’ events.100 This dating system is signifcant on a number of levels. A considerable amount of effort would have been required in order to recalculate the dating of events throughout history from the relative point of the foundation of Rome. This reveals the importance of chronology to Orosius, specifcally a chronology based around the cultural, religious, physical, and political centre of Rome. Orosius’s chronography demonstrates a reliance on chronographical works like Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon. Although the Historiae was not technically chronographical or annalistic, it was heavily infuenced by the tradition of Christian chronography. The continual referencing back to ab urbe condita gives a reliable coherence and fullness to events recorded under the years in which they occurred. The sustained dating in the Historiae is evidence for Orosius’s apologetic, and reinforces the polemical sense of his argument as unchallengeable. The impression of factual reliability and authority within the Historiae is evident through comparison with a text like Justin’s Epitome of Trogus, where such a dating scheme is not included. If the Historiae is considered within the genre of epitome, the design of perpetual dating would make the work more useful as a point of reference for Roman history.101 This is suggested by the frequent joint use of ab urbe condita and consular dating, which would aid the verifcation of the chronology of events. The idea of the usefulness of the work, especially in an educational setting, was a likely motivation for Orosius in providing an alternative version of Roman history, which included much Eastern material and Greek history, elided traditional pagan religion, and most signifcantly predated the infuence of Christianity on human history. Orosius’s chronological ordering by ab urbe condita carries with it signifcant cultural, religious, political, and spatial implications. As Hayden White has shown in relation to dating the Christian epoch, anno Domini refers both to ‘a cosmological story given in Scripture and to a calendrical convention that historians in the west still use to mark the units of their histories’.102 Although auc has lost its equivalent modern resonance, the constant reference to the mythical beginnings of Rome remind the reader of the fundamental importance of the empire and the impact of Rome in history, as a revolutionary point within time. Dating from the birth of Abraham in the Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome was a standardized method already worked out in some detail and would have offered Orosius a relatively straightforward option for recalibrating the historical record. This opportunity was rejected in preference for a different foundation myth not situated within Scripture, but

The making of time 65 nonetheless a cultural and religious choice that arguably contributed to the transformation of Rome as the centre of the Christian west. All of history, even that which is not western-orientated, is related back to the foundation of the city. The cultural shorthand of ‘the City’ reveals the authorial expectation of a continuous ideology and establishes the fundamental primacy of Rome in the past, present, and future of time. Although the ordering of time through auc is presented as a standardized and consistent dating system in the Historiae, its broader critical reception is not as cohesive or straightforward. While the dating system has been accepted as ancient even for the Romans, this belief has been challenged by the claim that it is essentially a modern invention. E. J. Bickerman argues: an era ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city of Rome, did not, in reality, exist in the ancient world, and the use of reckoning the years in this way is modern. The Romans used this epoch only to measure time distance from it to some subsequent event.103 Declercq agrees, arguing that dating using auc was a modern construction that has misled historians into the belief that it was a contemporary dating system.104 Within this context Orosius is specifcally highlighted as an exception by Declercq: The only Christian author in late Antiquity to use this dating system was Orosius…[who] places the nativity of Christ on 25 December AUC 752 (2 BC), the beginning of the reign of Tiberius in AUC 767 (AD 14) and the frst year of Diocletian in AUC 1041 (AD 288).105 Alden A. Mosshammer echoes Declerq in arguing that the Roman system of dating was not formulated around auc but by the consular lists, and that Orosius was unique among earlier authors in using the foundation of Rome to date the birth of Christ. Mosshammer emphasizes how unusual this type of dating was, and concludes that Dionysius Exiguus working in the sixth century did not derive his dating of the birth of Christ from Orosius.106 An exception to these arguments that the use of auc in the Historiae is unique is Eutropius’s Breviarium ab urbe condita. Eutropius employs a system of technical dating formulated around ab urbe condita, but follows Varro in dating the foundation of Rome to 753 BCE. This divergence raises important considerations for Orosius’s historiographical objectives. Eutropius is explicitly cited as a source twice in the Historiae (7.11.1, 3:42 and 7.19.4, 3:54–5). The conscious imitation of Eutropius ties the Historiae much more frmly to the genre of Epitome than has been previously supposed, and informs the understanding of the text and its reception in the contemporary world of the early ffth century. The dating system auc, often conceived of as ancient, was a product of a specifc period within history writing in the midfourth to the early ffth century. Popularized by Orosius’s Historiae, that

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the dating system is projected on to much earlier literature by scholarship arguably illustrates how pervasive the Historiae was on the historiographical consciousness of the western Mediterranean, but in a way that leaves the work largely unrecognized. Despite contradictions within modern criticism, it seems that the computation of time from the founding of Rome was not generally used as a standard chronographic system in earlier Roman literature. This does not, however, mean it was not used at all. Instead, ab urbe condita was reserved for occasional relative dating, as measuring temporal distance from a specifc event, not as the foundation for a calendar of years. For example, an inscription from the frst century CE shows the newly elected emperor Nerva restored the liberty of Rome ‘in the year of the City 848’: Libertati ab imp. Nerva Ca[es]ar[e] Aug., anno ab urbe condita DCCCXXXXIIX XIIII [k.] Oc[t.], restitu[tae] s. p. q. R.107 The senate and the people of Rome to Liberty restored on 18 September in the year of the City 848 by Imperator Nerva Caesar Augustus. Similarly, Velleius Paterculus, writing his Roman History in the frst century CE, dates from the foundation of Rome in conjunction with the consulship and from the present day: ‘and in the consulship of Aelius Catus and Gaius Sentius, on the twenty-seventh of June, he adopted him, seven hundred and ffty-four years after the founding of the city, and twenty-seven years ago’.108 Locating events within time according to the benchmark of the foundation of Rome is not an innovation limited strictly to the Historiae; it is an existing literary device in the Roman period. However, the distinction between relative and sporadic dating and an organized dating system is here crucial. The Historiae developed a comprehensible dating system centred on the foundation of Rome in a way that previous works were not. As in Eutropius’s Breviarium, dating according to auc was a way of regulating and ordering time in a consistent and sustained manner, not simply as a relative and occasional point of temporal contact. The function of auc in the Historiae is distinct from sporadic relativism; it is the foundation of Orosius’s chronographic system. Although the dating system ab urbe condita is the most widespread in the text, Orosius also dates much of his history using the successive reigns of Roman consuls.109 For example, the year 146 BCE is introduced: In the six hundredth and sixth year after the founding of the City, that is, in the same year as that in which Carthage was destroyed, in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Mummius. (5.3.1, 2:177)110 In addition to the use of the consulship as a dating scheme, like many late antique historians Orosius uses the Olympiad designation, a four-year

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period associated with the Olympic Games. The year 751 BCE is given a long epithet, situating it frmly within the ancient classical tradition: In the four hundred and fourteenth year after the overthrow of Troy, moreover in the sixth Olympiad, which precisely in the ffth year, after the intervening four years had been completed, was customarily celebrated in Elis, a city of Greece, the city of Rome was founded in Italy by Romulus and Remus, twin originators. (2.4.1, 1:48)112 The record of Roman consuls has been described as ‘the principal mechanism for charting the past time of the city’ and as providing ‘a base for the Romans’ distinctive form of annalistic historiography’.113 The use of the consulship as a dating mechanism continued until the sixth century CE, when it eventually died out.114 The list of Olympic victors, frst drawn up at the end of the ffth century BCE, has not survived antiquity, and the most comprehensive record is found in Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon. Orosius dates according to auc, incorporating comparative references to the consular year, the Olympiads, and sporadic past events like the fall of Troy, to give both an expansive historical overview and a secure sense of past time. This has the effect of secularizing history: Orosius eschews the Christian calendar, which is perhaps surprising given the explicit Christian agenda of the text. Yet this is a deliberate approach that precludes potential criticism of a circular Christian argument based only on Scripture. It is a subtle and repeated element in the ideological re-formation of the past, to make Christian history that was previously pagan, but without relying on exclusively Christian material. Orosius’s dating from the founding of Rome upsets ancient and modern distinctions of time. In his examination of the ancient approach to time in comparison with modern sensibilities towards the past, Denis Feeney argues for the disparity between the ancient organization of time through proximity to signifcant events and the modern method of temporal orientation which relies upon the numerical date: [C]orrelating Greek and Roman dates means correlating Greek and Roman events. There is, in fact, no Greek or Latin word for ‘date’. An ancient date is an event – or to be more precise, any date is a relationship between two or more events. As inhabitants of the B.C.E./C.E. grid, we simply cannot help thinking of ancient writers as working with dates, which to us are numbers. But they are not connecting numbers; they are connecting signifcant events and people.115 Feeney argues that the ultimate foundation of the modern chronological system is the connecting of events, but that is almost always hidden by numerical dating and the idea of ‘absolute time’.116 Feeney understands that the ancient approach was not to ‘date’ in the modern numerical sense, but to organize time according to canonical historical events from which intervals

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forwards or backwards could be counted.117 This necessitates a reconsideration of the place of the Historiae within its literary and historiographical context. Even though Orosius dates from the ‘event’ of the founding of Rome, this is his equivalent of a date in the same way that the number ‘1965’ represents 1,965 years since the event of the birth of Christ. Not only is Orosius’s use of auc innovative, but the concept of a numerical dating system represents a departure from the ancient historiographical approach to time. There is, therefore, a correspondence between Orosius’s dating auc and the modern method of dating BC/AD, especially because of the concentration on numerical dating and the constant reference to ‘the foundation of the City’ in a numerical form. The comparison repositions the Historiae as more closely aligned to the modern approach to time, and as fulflling an important role in the transference of numerical dating systems from chronicles into historical text. The synchronistic and determined system of dating utilized by the Historiae is not the only means of organizing time in the text. Time is coordinated by a fxed point which functions as a pivot around which the apologetic argument is constructed. The most important temporal division of the work is the bisection of history by the seminal event of the birth of Christ. The pre-Christian world was a dark place illuminated only by the fres of its own destruction, but following the birth of Christ, or the ‘Incarnation’, in the Christian Roman, empire everything is better than it used to be and is getting better still.118 All wars are ended, and a peace that includes ‘every nation from east to west, from north to south, and all around the encircling ocean’ is established (6.22.1, 2:280).119 Even Mount Etna, which boiled over frequently in eruptions, now only ‘smokes in an innocent manner to give faith to its activity in the past’ (2.14.3, 1:65).120 While the Historiae is a universal Christian text, it is also a Roman history, indicated by the dating system auc. Yet the text is ultimately intent on demonstrating the divine providence of God on human history and predating Christianity within time.121 For this reason, the Incarnation and not the foundation of Rome is the crucial point on which everything depends. Orosius’s universal scheme of dating by the founding of Rome and division according to the Incarnation foreshadows the invention of the standard anno Domini method of dating by Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century.122 Nevertheless, dating according to the birth of Christ did not suit Orosius’s purposes. The Historiae is not ecclesiastical history, it is Roman history in content and form but rewritten from a Christian theological perspective. Dating by the foundation of Rome but dividing the work by the Incarnation achieved the recalibration of time and synthesized the Roman and Christian historiographical traditions in one text.

Conclusion Temporal practices are never neutral affairs. They are often the focus of intense ideological struggle. The Historiae is fundamentally motivated by

The making of time 69 tension and confict, expanding the vista of time to a universal level to ensure the continuing and unassailable hold of Christianity on the past. As a historian, Orosius does not simply gather and list dates. The Historiae is much more innovative, in three main ways: frst in its universal scope; secondly in its ideology to defend, promote, and attack using the events of the past; and thirdly in its system of dating. Orosius’s restructuring of time irrevocably binds together the empire of Rome and the worship of Christianity, divinely ordained by the auctor temporum, ‘the author of Time’, the Christian God (1.3.4, 1:42). Orosius’s discourse on time functions to prove the divine infuence of God on all of history throughout time and place, not just time after the Incarnation. The Historiae represents a historiographical shift in the relationship of Roman history to world history and, most signifcantly, Christian history. Christian history, which is now all of time, is reoriented around Rome through the dating system ab urbe condita, and in the broader structuring of time around empire, where the rhythm of the rise and fall of empire reveals a wider purpose to history, beginning with Babylon and the east, and concluding with the fnal culmination in Rome and the west. But despite the importance of empire, it is the Incarnation of Christ that ultimately determines the construction of the Historiae. Although a technical system that dates from Christ’s birth is absent, Orosius’s management of time can be justifably seen as a precursor to the BC/AD scheme in the organization of the work around the Incarnation. His innovative comprehension of time diverges from ancient approaches and can be understood as presaging the development of the modern tradition of dating that began in the Middle Ages.

Notes 1 Michael Allen similarly interprets the Historiae in a temporal fashion, as ‘a narrative reckoning with the content and meaning of time’. Michael I. Allen, ‘Universal History 300–1000: Origins and Western Developments’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 26. 2 For the calculation of years, see 1.1.5–7, 1:10–11. 3 H. C. Coffn, ‘Vergil and Orosius’, Classical Journal 31 (1935): 235. Garry W. Trompf, ‘Consolations of History under the Declining Western Empire: Sulpicius and Orosius’, in Early Christian Historiography: Narratives of Retributive Justice (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), 294–5: ‘for all its “axegrinding”’, the Historiae has been classifed as ‘not only the frst detailed Christian world history, but also arguably the only fully extant major “universal history” surviving from antiquity’. See also Giuseppe Zecchini, ‘Latin Historiography: Jerome, Orosius and the Western Chronicles’, in Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century AD, ed. by Gabriele

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Marasco (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 320; Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 57; W. H. C. Frend, ‘Augustine and Orosius on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West’, Augustinian Studies 20 (1989): 23. For a discussion of the translation of time from ffth-century Rome to ninthcentury Anglo-Saxon England, including ab urbe condita, see Mary Kate Hurley, ‘Alfredian Temporalities: Time and Translation in the Old English Orosius’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, no. 4 (2013), 405–32. Anke Walter, Time in Ancient Stories of Origin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 211. For a comparison of Augustine and Orosius in relation to time, see Donald J. Wilcox, The Measure of Times Past: Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric of Relative Time (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 131. For Augustine and time, see Simo Knuutila, ‘Time and Creation in Augustine’, in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 103–15. Walter observes the persistence of the trope in the Historiae of the blindness of the pagans which will recur at the very end of time, when they will enter into perpetual damnation without seeing it. Walter, Time, 223. Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet observes the abundance and apparent precision of the chronological information in the Historiae, and emphasizes its importance in the subsequent reception of the work. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose: Histoires (Contre les païens) (Paris: Budé, 1990), 1:xlv. Henri-Irénée Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin, Orose et l’Augustinisme historique’, La storiografa altomedievale, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 17, vol. 1 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1970), 70, recognizes the originality and impact of Orosius’s decision to begin his work with the Creation. A. T. Fear, Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 14. See Peter Munz, The Shapes of Time: A New Look at the Philosophy of History (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1977), 115, for the choice between the historiographical models of rise and fall vs. a successive historical narrative. Walter, Time, 216. interea (3.5.1); diuque et per varios casus (3.4.11); Sed post annos plurimos (3.4.12). Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Earth Is Our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 76. The dating system seems to have been known to Isidore of Seville: see Etymologiae 36.4. For a brief discussion of the dating system, see E. Michael Gerli, Samuel G. Armistead, et al. (eds), Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia (London: Routledge, 2003), 190 (‘Calendar’). Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 76. Prologue 10–11, 1:8: …quaecumque aut bellis gravia aut corrupta morbis aut fame tristia aut terrarum motibus terribilia aut inundationibus aquarum insolita aut eruptionibus ignium metuenda aut ictibus fulminum plagisque grandinum saeva vel etiam parricidiis fagitiisque misera per transacta… In her analysis of the Old English Orosius, Hurley draws similar conclusions: ‘The Orosius narrator takes a point of view that is greater than that of men…the future always conditions (and touches) the past… The past cannot be fully understood without the understanding of the future toward which it moves forward in time, a privileged position occupied by the Orosius narrator.’ Hurley, ‘Alfredian Temporalities’, 424–5. For example, see Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:ix–xx.

The making of time 71 18 Philip Rousseau (ed.), A Companion to Late Antiquity (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2012), xxii. 19 See Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 13–31. 20 ab initio peccati hominis, 1.1.4, 1:10. 21 The same writers are referred to again at 1.3.6, 1:43 as gentiles historici, ‘pagan historians’. Marco Formisano, ‘Grand Finale: Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos or the Subversion of History’, in Der Fall Roms und seine Widerauferstehungen in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. by Karla Pollmann and Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 173, interprets the Historiae as a radical revisionist response to earlier historiography: ‘Orosius’s text radically criticizes history, both as knowledge and as literary genre; history loses its substance since it is nothing other than a mass of debris caused by human hubris.’ 22 Hurley, ‘Alfredian Temporalities’, 408. 23 Fear, Orosius, 34n12. 24 Rosamond McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 9: ‘The liturgical reception of Biblical narrative and Gospel story created a fundamental orientation of attitude and perspective as well as being common currency.’ 25 For more on Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon, see Richard W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time: The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD, vol. 1, A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from Its Origins to the High Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); Madeline McMahon, ‘Polemic in Translation: Jerome’s Fashioning of History in the Chronicle’, in Historiography and Identity I: Ancient and Early Christian Narratives of Community, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 21–46. 26 McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past, 10. 27 Justin’s Epitome begins with the reign of Ninus (Epitoma 1.1), and Ninus features in Augustine’s De civitate Dei (4.6). Ninus is signifcant as the frst ruler to extend his rule over others in the form of an empire. This nuance is lost in the Old English Orosius, where Ninus becomes the frst king in the history of the world. For further discussion, see Francis Leneghan, ‘Translatio Imperii: The Old English Orosius and the Rise of Wessex’, Anglia 133, no. 4 (2015): 680–1. 28 Ian Wood sees Orosius’s point of departure as essentially the same as EusebiusJerome’s. Ian Wood, ‘Universal Chronicles in the Early Medieval West’, Medieval Worlds 1 (2015): 52. 29 See Wilcox, Measure of Times Past, 141. 30 1.1.6, 1:11: …se inter actores scriptoresque omnium otia negotiaque triverunt. 31 Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, praefatio: Verum in curiositate ne cesses, et cum divinam scripturam diligenter evolveris, a nativitate Abraham usque ad totius orbis dilunium invenies retrorsum annos DCCCCXLII, item a diluvio usque ad Adam annos II CCXLII, in quibus nulla penitus nec Graeca nec barbara et, ut loquar in commune, gentilis invenitur historia. ‘Indeed, if you do not falter in carefulness and when you have diligently pored over the Divine Scripture, from the birth of Abraham back to the Flood of the whole earth, you will fnd 942 years, and from the Flood back to Adam, 2,242, in which no completely Greek, or barbarian or, to speak in general terms, gentile history is found.’ 32 For the choice of dating system and beginning with Abraham, see Richard W. Burgess, Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins: Historiography and History in the Later Roman Empire (Ashgate, Surrey: Variorum, 2011) (III) 11 and 16: ‘He [Eusebius] chose Abraham, chiefy because he was regarded by Eusebius and other

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The making of time Christians as either the frst Christian or as a proto-Christian. The Chronicle is, therefore, a history of the known world since the frst coming of Christianity, and his ‘ann. Abr.’ chronology is therefore a proto-AD system.’ Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, Eusebii interpretata praefatio: Quam ob rem praesens opusculum ab Abraham et Nino usque ad nostram aetatem inferiora tempora persequetur; et statim in principio sui Hebraeorum Abraham, Assyriorum Ninum et Semiramim proponet, quia neque Athenarum adhuc urbs, neque Argivorum regnum nomen acceperat, solis Sicyoniis in Graecia forentibus: apud quos temporibus Abrahae et Nini Europem secundum regnasse ferunt. ‘That is why the present little work traces the later years from Abraham and Ninus down to our time; and starts by displaying Abraham of the Jews, Ninus and Semiramis of the Assyrians, because at this time Athens was not a city, nor had the kingdom of the Argives received its name, as the Sicyonians alone were fourishing in Greece: they say that among them, in the days of Abraham and Ninus, Europs was the second to have reigned.’ See 7.2.13–16, 3:19–20 of the Historiae for parallels between the birth of Abraham and the birth of Christ. Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 105. 1.1.13, 1:12: quid impedimenti est nos eius rei caput pandere cuius illi corpus expresserint et priora illa saecula, quae multo numerosiora monstramus, vel tenuissimo testari relatu similes miserias pertulisse? See Fear, Orosius, 27–30 for a useful synopsis of the Historiae. Compare with Momigliano’s statement: ‘As far as I know, the Christians were unable to write their history for pagans.’ Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’, History and Theory 6, Suppl. 6: History and the Concept of Time (1966): 21. 1.1.5–7, 1:10–11: Sunt autem ab Adam primo homine usque ad Ninum ‘magnum’ ut dicunt regem, quando natus est Abraham, anni III CLXXXIIII…A Nino autem vel Abraham usque ad Caesarem Augustum – id est usque ad nativitatem Christi quae fuit anno imperii Caesaris quadragesimo secundo, cum facta pace cum Parthis Iani portae clausae sunt et bella toto orbe cessarunt – colliguntur anni II XV. 1.1.14, 1:12: Dicturus igitur ab orbe condito usque ad Vrbem conditam, dehinc usque ad Caesaris principatum nativitatemque Christi ex quo sub potestate Vrbis orbis mansit imperium, vel etiam usque ad dies nostros. In his choice of phrasing Orosius is punning on urbis and orbis. Cf. Varro, De lingua latina 5.143. For discussion see Adolf Lippold (ed.), Orosio: le Storie contro i pagani (Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, A. Mondadori, 1976), 1:367. Fear, Orosius, 35n19. Lozovsky, The Earth Is Our Book, 70. Lozovsky, The Earth Is Our Book, 70. 1.1.16–17, 1:12: …ut primum ipsum terrarum orbem quem inhabitat humanum genus sicut est a maioribus trifarium distributum, deinde regionibus provinciisque determinatum, expediam; quo facilius, cum locales bellorum morborumque clades ostentabuntur, studiosi quique non solum rerum ac temporum sed etiam locorum scientiam consequantur. See Herodotus 2.16; Pliny, Naturalis historia 3.1; Pomponius Mela 1.1. Jonathan Shepard, ‘Europe and the Wider World’, in The Early Middle Ages: Europe 400-1000, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 224. Genesis 9:1. Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 1.4. See Maurice Olender, ‘Europe, or How to Escape Babel’, History and Theory 33, no. 4, Theme Issue 33: Proof and Persuasion in History (1994): 10. Fear, Orosius, 16.

The making of time 73 49 Lozovsky, The Earth Is Our Book, 70. 50 Yves Janvier, La Géographie d’Orose (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres, 1982), 262, quoting Benoît Lacroix, Orose et ses idées (Paris: Librairie philosophique, 1965), 52. For an assessment of the impact of Orosius as an ancient geographer, see A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35–6. See also Eugenio Corsini, Introduzione alle ‘Storie’ di Orosio (Turin: University of Turin, 1968), 73–83. Formisano, ‘Grand Finale’, 166–8 emphasizes the spatial turn in late antique literature and perceives the importance of space over time in the Historiae. 51 1.1.17, 1:12: …studiosi quique non solum rerum ac temporum sed etiam locorum scientiam consequantur. 52 Munz, The Shapes of Time, 37. 53 N. D. Munn, ‘The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay’, Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992): 101: ‘The circular-linear opposition has also been questioned on the basis that so-called “circular” (repetitive) time does not logically exclude “linear” sequencing because each repetition of a given “event” necessarily occurs later than previous ones. The analogy between time and a circle closing back on itself misleads here.’ 54 For meaning within history connected with myth and the rise and fall of empire, see Munz, The Shapes of Time, 115. 55 Cf. Shami Ghosh, who attributes considerable agency to Orosius in developing his theory of successive empires: ‘Orosius, far more effectively that EusebiusJerome, formulated an idea of history in which political power and religious salvation were inextricably linked, and also developed the concept of a Christian “translatio imperii”… This allowed later authors to compose histories of post-imperial kingdoms and empires that nevertheless fulflled a key role in salvation history, following the model of Rome in Orosius’s presentation.’ Shami Ghosh, Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 28–9. 56 Ennius, Annales, Fragment 501; Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.22. Joseph Ward Swain, ‘The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History under the Roman Empire’, Classical Philology 35 (1940): 14; Garry W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought: From Antiquity to the Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 222–3. 57 Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’, 21. 58 François Paschoud, Roma aeterna: études sur le patriotisme romain dans l’Occident latin a l’époque des Grandes Invasions (Rome: Institut suisse, 1967), 279. 59 Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’. Swain challenges the assumption that the philosophy of history is of primary importance for Christian writers by citing the signifcance of the theory for pagan writers, beginning with Velleius Paterculus (2). 60 Fear, Orosius, 19. 61 Swain points out that the four-empire theory is fundamental to Pompeius Trogus’s History, further suggesting a reliance by Orosius on Justin’s Epitome of Trogus. Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’, 16–18. Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin’, 73, stresses the originality of Orosius in his manipulation of the four-empire theory. 62 Fear, Orosius, 19. 63 Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750-1900, trans. by Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 131. 64 6.22.1, 2:234: Itaque anno ab Vrbe condita DCCLII, Caesar Augustus ab oriente in occidentem, a septentrione in meridiem ac per totum Oceani circulum cunctis gentibus una pace conpositis.

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65 5.2.3, 2:86: Latitudo orientis, septentrionis copiositas, meridiana diffusio, magnarum insularum largissimae tutissimaeque sedes mei iuris et nominis sunt quia ad Christianos et Romanos Romanus et Christianus accedo. 66 Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.22. 67 Trompf, Historical Recurrence, 224. 68 2.2.10–11, 1:87–8: siquidem sub una eademque convenientia temporum illa cecidit, ista surrexit; illa tunc primum alienigenarum perpessa dominatum, haec tunc primum etiam suorum aspernata fastidium; illa tunc quasi moriens dimisit hereditatem, haec vero pubescens tunc se agnovit heredem: tunc Orientis occidit et ortum est Occidentis imperium. 69 Cf. Formisano, ‘Grand Finale’, 168: ‘The very fact that history is constructed like an ensemble of simultaneous events emphasizes the ubiquitous presence of God’s design, but on a textual level it tends towards the elimination of the passage of time and even of the essence of history, which is precisely the uniqueness of events.’ 70 6.14.1, 2:202–3: …Romani status agitur semper alterna mutatio, et velut forma Oceani maris, quae omni die dispar, nunc succiduis per septem dies attollitur incrementis, nunc insequentibus totidem diebus naturali damno et defectur interiore subducitur. Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘The Concept of Time in the Historiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. by Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick J. Geary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), 154 argues that this theory of the changeable and transitory nature of history, which he terms mutabilitas mundi, becomes important in later medieval historiography, reaching its ‘most developed expression’ in the works of Otto of Freising. Otto followed the example of Orosius by writing his chronicle in seven ‘historical’ books but with the addition of an eighth book concerned with eternity and the end of time. On Orosius and Otto, see Goetz, ‘Concept of Time’, 148n39. 71 The dichotomy between the ‘pagan’ cyclical concept of time and the ‘Christian’ linear concept of time is thoroughly discussed and deconstructed by Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’. 72 2.3.3, 1:88: opibus spoliata. 73 This is reinforced at 2.3.5–10, 1:89–90. 74 See Richard Flower, Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 107: ‘When viewed against the background of Homeric heroes and Republican consuls, a Christian emperor was an unusual novelty, breaking with centuries of polytheistic tradition. However, when placed in the context of Christian history, he became the latest divinely sanctioned ruler in a narrative of growth and triumph.’ See Flower, Emperors and Bishops, 16–17 for a brief discussion of the impact of Christianity and imperial approval. 75 2.1.3. 1:84: Quapropter omnem potestatem a Deo esse omnemque ordinationem et qui non legerunt sentiunt et qui legerunt cognoscunt. 76 Trompf, Historical Recurrence, 224. 77 Arnaldo Momigliano, The Confict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 82. 78 Richard Landes, ‘Lest the Millennium Be Fulflled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography, 100-800 CE’, in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. by Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), 160. For a discussion of time in the future and eschatology, see Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 153–6. Van Nuffelen argues that there is nothing Millennial about the Historiae, because eschatology

The making of time 75

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

lies beyond its scope. Brenda Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence: A History. The Bible, Virgil, Orosius, Augustine, and Dante (New York: Continuum, 2012), 1. 2.6.13, 1:98: quidquid enim est opere et manu factum, labi et consumi vetustate. 4.5.12, 2:20: nos in ultimo temporum positi. Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 152. Daley, Hope of the Early Church, 152. Trompf, Historical Recurrence, 225. See also Walter, Time, 223–4. For the argument of Orosius’s apocalyptic views as post-millenarian, see Fear, Orosius, 10–11. Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’, 20; 21. 7.43.5–7, 3:128: se inprimis ardenter inhiasse, ut, oblitterato Romano nomine, Romanum omne solum Gothorum imperium et faceret et vocaret, essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia quod Romania fuisset: feret nunc Athaulfus quod quondam Caesar Augustus; at ubi multa experientia probavisset neque Gothos ullo modo parere legibus posse propter effrenatam barbariem…elegisse saltim ut gloriam sibi de restituendo in integrum augendoque Romano nomine Gothorum viribus quaereret habereturque apud posteros Romanae restitutionis auctor. Rousseau, A Companion to Late Antiquity, xxii. Landes, ‘Apocalyptic Expectations’, 160. David Asheri, ‘The Art of Synchronization in Greek Historiography: The Case of Timaeus of Tauromenium’, Scripta Classica Israelica 11 (1991–2): 52. For the term ‘technical chronology’, see A. Grafton and N. M. Swerdlow, ‘Technical Chronology and Astrological History in Varro, Censorinus and Other Authors’, The Classical Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1985): 454. Walter, Time, 211. Ab urbe condita is often abbreviated to auc. Although this abbreviation is not used in the Historiae, it will sometimes be employed here. 1.4.1, 1:43: Ante annos Vrbis conditae MCCC Ninus rex Assyriorum, ‘primus’ ut ipsi volunt, propagandae dominationis libidine arma foras extulit… Noted by Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:xlvi n81. Fear highlights 752 BCE as the date found in the Fasti Capitolini, ‘the offcial list of Roman magistrates erected in the forum at Rome’, and argues that Orosius chose the day to correspond his account of the Roman past with the ‘offcial’ version of the day. Fear, Orosius, 18. Georges Declercq, ‘Dionysius Exiguus and the Introduction of the Christian Era’, Sacris Erudiri 41 (2002), 228–9n208. Alan E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity (Munich: Beck, 1972), 249. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology, 249–50. For a further discussion of this issue, see Denis Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 8. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.34. 1.19.1, 1:68–9: Anno ante Vrbe conditam LXIIII novissimus apud Assyrios regnavit Sardanapallus, vir muliere corruptior. Hayden V. White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 8. For Orosius’s Historiae as Epitome, see: Momigliano, Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1966), 1:95–7; Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 51–2. White, The Content of the Form, 8. E. J. Bickerman, Chronology in the Ancient World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 77. For auc as an ancient system of dating, see Robert Hannah, Greek

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105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112

113 114 115 116 117 118 119

The making of time and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World (London: Duckworth, 2005), 152. Gustav Teres understands auc as the offcial method for calculating Roman time. Gustav Teres, ‘Time Computations and Dionysius Exiguus’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 15 (1984): 183. Alan Samuel argues that ‘[a] number of such systems were devised, but as Roman scholarship never reached a consensus in the founding date, each of the systems was at variance with the others, so that there was no era ab urbe condita which could by consensus be used for all, and which by designating years with numerals only, could satisfy a desire for brevity and at the same time identify those years precisely and without reference either to consuls or the deviser of the system’. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology, 249–50. Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, 136: ‘Dates ab urbe condita were used on occasion by historians… Save in…very particular – and politically signifcant – contexts, AUC dates were rarely used for ordinary dating, either privately or publicly.’ Declercq, ‘Dionysius Exiguus’, 229. Similarly A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), 1:7: ‘Numbering years was a device half adopted by the Romans (A.U.C. together with the consular names), but by one of the curiosities of history, it long eluded the Greeks.’ Declercq, ‘Dionysius Exiguus’, 229. Alden A. Mosshammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 341. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, VI 472; Dessau (1892), I 274, 74. Velleius Paterculus 2.103.3: et eum Aelio Cato C. Sentio consulibus V. Kal. Iulias, post urbem conditam annis septingentis quinquaginta quattuor, abhinc annos septem et viginti adoptaret. The consular dating system identifed years by the names of the two annually elected consuls, the chief magistrates, in post. The consular fasti are described by Burgess and Kulikowski as a ‘proto-chronicle’. Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, 26. The universal historian Diodorus Siculus used consular designations for years along with Athenian archons and Olympiads. An important source for the Historiae, Livy dates by the consular year. Bickerman, Chronology, 69; 77. For the calibration of consular dating with signifcant events in Christian history, see Michele R. Salzman, On Roman Time: The CodexCalendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 35–42. 5.3.1, 2:87: Anno ab Vrbe condita DCVI, hoc est eodem anno quo et Carthago deleta est, Cn. Cornelio Lentulo L. Mummio consulibus. For further examples, see 2.13.2, 1:110; 2.13.8, 2:111. 2.4.1, 1:90: Anno post eversionem Troiae CCCCXIIII olympiade autem sexta  – quae quinto demum anno quattuor in medio expletis apud Elidem Graeciae civitatem agone et ludis exerceri solet – urbs Roma in Italia a Romulo et Remo geminis auctoribus condita est. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 6. Roger S. Bagnall, Alan Cameron, Seth R. Schwartz, and K. A. Worp, Consuls of the Later Roman Empire (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), 7. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 15. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 15. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 13. See also P.-J. Shaw, Discrepancies in Olympiad Dating and Chronological Problems of Archaic Peloponnesian History (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2003), 29. For an explicit statement, see 2.5.10, 1:95. 6.22.1, 2:234: ab oriente in occidentem, a septentrione in meridiem ac per totum Oceani circulum…

The making of time 77 120 2.14.3, 1:112: Aethna ipsa quae tunc cum excidio urbium atque agrorum crebris eruptionibus aestuabat, nunc tantum innoxia specie ad praeteritorum fdem fumat. 121 For something of an opposing view, but one that nonetheless recognizes the important assimilation of pagan and Christian historiography by Orosius, see Lacroix, Orose et ses idées, 55. 122 Eusebius’s method of dating in the Chronicon is highlighted similarly: ‘He [Eusebius] chose Abraham, chiefy because he was regarded by Eusebius and other Christians as either the frst Christian or as a proto-Christian. The Chronicle is, therefore, a history of the known world since the frst coming of Christianity, and his “ann. Abr.” chronology is therefore a proto-AD system.’ Burgess, Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins, 16.

3

The emperor and the divine

Introduction Following the geographical description of the known world, the Historiae opens with a dramatic statement on the wicked and sinful nature of mankind. After the creation of man, whom God made ‘virtuous and pure’, the human race became ‘depraved by lusts’ and ‘sordid with sins’ (1.3.1, 1:20).1 The fall of the frst man and the sinful nature of mankind, punished by endless catastrophe, dominates six of the seven books of the Historiae.2 Divine retribution for sin and human fallibility underlie Orosius’s conception of his historiographical narrative; the infamous ‘catalogue of disasters’ Orosius promises to relay in the Prologue (10) runs on and on: even by the close of Book 5, wrongs are still following wrongs.3 Only halfway through the sixth book comes redemption. The fgure of Octavian, the militaristic Roman general who defeated Antony at the battle of Actium, is transformed into the princeps Augustus and provides the political context for the Incarnation of Christ to occur. The reign of Augustus, together with the beginning of the Roman empire, is the crucial pivot for the entire work. The pre-Christian world was a dark place illuminated only by the fres of its own destruction, but, following Augustus’s accession and the Incarnation in the Christian Roman empire, everything is better than it used to be and is getting better still (2.5.10, 1:95). Even Mount Etna, which ‘in the past boiled over in frequent eruptions’ now only ‘smokes in an innocent manner to give faith to its activity in the past’ (2.14.2, 1:65).4 The philosophy of history that foregrounds the providential coincidence of Christ and Augustus is often dismissed as ‘Eusebian’ and not explored further, or Augustus’s role is overlooked.5 This chapter argues that the parallelism of the beginnings of empire and Christianity, established through the frst emperor as a mirror of Christ, is central to Orosius’s political theology, and casts a long shadow over the text. The fgure of Augustus is deliberately, precisely, and arduously interwoven with the concept of a universal peace, the birth of Christ, the role of empire, and a monotheism that transcends heaven and earth. The imagery of the temple of Janus, the titling of Augustus, and miracles associated with his accession are reappropriated

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599120-4

The emperor and the divine 79 from their pagan origins in the rewriting of the Roman imperial past to complement a new Christian agenda. While the centrality of the emperor Augustus within the Historiae is seldom questioned, the signifcance of Roman imperial authority has been critically overlooked as obvious and banal. Robert Markus’s approach is disdainful, and Peter Van Nuffelen devalues the role of the emperor and the empire in favour of God and Christianity.6 The synchronism between Rome and Christianity is ‘axiomatic’ for Ronald Syme, and although Erik Peterson recognizes Orosius as unique in the extent of his association between Augustus and Christ, his discussion concludes that the political meaning of the construction is ‘patent’.7 But Orosius’s approach to engaging Augustus as a narrative tool to generate Christian meaning in history is not straightforward or prosaic; rather, it is bold and innovative. Perhaps to assimilate pagan and Christian history for his Christian audience, Orosius is unwilling to engage with the coming of Christ on its own terms: he does not write ecclesiastical or theological history. Instead, the emphasis is on Augustus, sanitized by the favouring of divine providence and appropriated within Christian history.

The temple of Janus Orosius’s apologetic assimilates the traditional, pagan version of Roman history which emphasizes the centrality of the frst emperor, but for Orosius the success of empire is a consequence of Christianity and owes nothing to the pagan gods. The exploitation of pagan historiographical symbolism begins with the leitmotif of the temple of Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings. Augustus’s reign is foregrounded as an idealized state of peacefulness by this leitmotif, which runs through the Historiae. It operates in stark contrast to all previous periods of Roman history, particularly Republican Rome, which was dominated by confict and high body counts. The doors of the small temple of Janus located in the Roman Forum were traditionally opened in times of war to release the god in defence of Rome, and closed in times of peace to keep the god inside the City.8 Janus was the god of doors, arches, and gates: accordingly all things are begun and ended by Janus, with the month of January (Ianuarius) named after him from 153 BCE.9 Described by Filippo Coarelli as ‘the oldest and most important sanctuary’, the precise location of the temple in Rome is contested.10 According to tradition, the temple was founded as an indicem pacis bellique (‘indication of peace and war’) by Numa, the second king of Rome.11 Throughout Numa’s reign, the doors of the temple were closed, but they were not again closed until after the frst Punic war, in the consulship of Titus Manlius.12 They were closed again in 235 BCE, in 30 BCE following the battle of Actium,13 and three times in the reign of Augustus.14 Orosius uses the ritualized closure to prove defnitively the extraordinary pacifsm that characterized Augustus’s

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reign, underpinning the polemical division of the text into pre- and postChrist history. The imagery of the temple of Janus facilitates Orosius’s polemical characterization of monarchical and then Republican Rome by war, violence, and misfortune. Rome’s conficts are amalgamated to give the impression of constant warfare: after the Samnite war came the war against Pyrrhus, which Orosius represents as closely followed by the Punic wars (3.8.1–3, 1:148). The gates of Janus are described as ‘ever-open’, indicating that ‘never, after the death of Numa, was there a cessation from the slaughters of wars, yet from that time on, the heat of misfortunes glowed as if pressed down at noon from the entire sky’ (3.8.2, 1:88).15 Deploring Rome’s belligerence allows Orosius to establish a polarized juxtaposition with the Christiana tempora: Furthermore, when the Punic War had once begun, let anyone who thinks that Christian times should be branded with infamy inquire, discover, and proclaim whether at any time wars, slaughters, destruction, and all manner of infamous deaths ever ceased except when Caesar Augustus ruled. (3.8.3, 1:88)16 The exception comes only after Roman peace with the Parthians, that ‘the whole world having laid down its arms and abandoned its discords, composed in a general peace and new quiet’ (3.8.5, 1:88).17 Roman law is universally adopted, and the hegemony of Rome is actively welcomed in a ‘single will with a free and honest zeal to serve the peace and consult the common good of all nations’ (3.8.6, 1:88).18 Orosius overlays the historical narrative of early imperial Rome with a Christian signifcance, reclaiming the imagery of the temple of Janus as an indicator of peace from pagan writers and positioning it as evidence for Christian revelation. The trope of Janus is at the centre of the construction of Augustus as redemptive, providentially favoured by the Christian God. His transition into this role is proclaimed by a sequence of ‘secular’ events that are given a theological signifcance. On 6 January, Augustus triumphantly returned to Rome having established his sole authority following his success in the civil wars. He entered the City and celebrated a triple triumph, and was frst given the title ‘Augustus’.19 Orosius synchronizes the investment of the highest political power in one man with the Epiphany of Christ, described as ‘the Apparition or the Manifestation of the Sacrament of the Lord’ (6.20.3, 2:275).20 The moment of synchronization is given a spectacular praeteritio while making evident the reasoning underlying the coordination of these events: Neither reason nor the opportunity demand that we now speak more fully about this sacrament which we observe most faithfully, so that we seem neither to have left it to interested inquirers nor to have pressed it upon the indifferent. But it was proper to have recorded this event

The emperor and the divine 81 faithfully for this reason, that in every respect the Empire of Caesar might be proven to have been prepared for Christ’s coming. (6.20.4, 2:275)21 Orosius determines not to articulate the signifcance of the synchronization, understanding that the meaning he fnds between the beginning of the Roman empire and the Incarnation of Christ is evident. This synchronization is extended to correspond with the closure of the gates of Janus: In the seven hundred and twenty-ffth year after the founding of the City, when the emperor himself, Caesar Augustus, for the ffth time, and L. Apuleius were consuls, returning from the East as victor, on the sixth of January entered the City with a triple triumph and, then, for the frst time, since all civil wars had been put to sleep and been ended, he himself closed the gates of Janus. (6.20.1, 2:274)22 Augustus’s triumphs were not held in January but in August, and the gates of Janus had been closed by the Senate on 11 January, but this is not an impassable obstacle for Orosius. His restatement of these events to ft his own purposes demonstrates his commitment to a Christian ideology before an accurate reporting of past events.23 This then enables him to argue that the concurrence of the closure of the gates of Janus, the assumption of the name Augustus, and the coincidence of the Epiphany demonstrate that Augustus was predestined by ‘a hidden order of events’ to facilitate the coming of Christ (6.20.8, 2:276).24 The inexorable progress of improving times culminates at the opening of Book 7 with the claim that: [i]n the whole world there was one peace among all, not because of the cessation of wars, but because of their abolition; the twin gates of Janus were closed since the roots of war had been torn out and not repressed. (7.2.16, 3:287)25 The peace of Augustus, demonstrated by the silence and rust of the closed temple of Janus, is driven not just by a cessation but an eradication of war. The peace that settles over humanity is transformative, generating political harmony characterized by a singularity that is paralleled not only in the sole authority of the emperor but in cohesion around the one empire and one God: …there was a single will with a free and honest zeal to serve the peace and consult the common good of all nations, entire provinces, innumerable cities, countless peoples, and the whole world, which formerly not even one city nor one group of citizens nor, what is worse, one household of brothers had been able to possess continually, moreover, if also

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The emperor and the divine when under the rule of Caesar these things came to pass, it is manifest that the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ had begun to illuminate this world with the brightest approbation. (3.8.6–7, 1:88–9)26

The shift in authority from Republic to empire has wider geographical and political repercussions. The variety of nations, governments, and people is reduced to the universal rule of Rome. Political diversity is elided within a ‘single will’ characterized by good and peaceful intention, which is directly contrasted with the political, social, and even familial multiplicity that perpetuated confict and warfare. Yet, the blanket of universalism that Orosius throws over history is not entirely homogenizing. Universal peace is deliberately attributed not to the greatness of Augustus (non magnitudine Caesaris), but to the power of God (sed potestate flii Dei, 3.8.8, 1:149). Imperial authority is the closest proximate to the divine, but the emperor is only ever an instrument of God’s will, regardless of how necessary Augustus’s earthly function is. Orosius is careful to establish that the nascence of the Roman empire under Augustus heralded the Messiah, but that does not necessitate the precedence of imperial over divine power. The ‘greatness of Caesar’ provided the conditions for the Incarnation, yet Rome and the emperor are frmly subordinate to the omnipotent power of the Creator God: ‘…that the world itself, according to general knowledge obeyed, not the ruler of one city, but the Creator of the whole world’ (3.8.8, 1:89).27 While Orosius’s universalizing rhetoric can seem to knit perfectly political and theological supremacy, imperial power is always limited to the facilitation of divine providence.28

The princeps and Julius Caesar Orosius positions the belligerent fgure of Julius Caesar as a foil to the transformed Augustus. Caesar seeks confict as much at home as abroad: Rome is ‘almost disembowelled and devoured to the very marrow’ by civil war, just as Rome’s empire is endlessly expanded, ‘almost to the outermost boundaries of the earth’ (6.14.3, 2:258).29 Orosius attributes the origin of disaster under Caesar to his pride (superbia), from which all civil wars blazed forth.30 Pride was a necessary part of both individual and national ambition in the expansion of empire, but this stands in sharp contrast with Augustus and the birth of Christ pride. Instead, pride is associated with individual ambition and inescapable punishment. The martial expansion of empire and the disasters caused by war under Caesar are juxtaposed with the reduction of power to the political hegemony of one rule under Augustus, enabling the narrative to shift radically away from pessimism, misery, and disaster. Conspicuous by its absence is the representation of Julius Caesar as the frst Roman emperor; instead, Orosius chooses to elide the status of Caesar as the frst emperor to preserve the synchronization between Augustus and Christ.31 This is a deliberate departure from Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon,

The emperor and the divine 83 where the major political shift in Roman history from Republic to Empire is recorded in the 67th Olympiad: After the kings had been expelled, frst two consuls began to exist at Rome, from Brutus; then tribunes of the plebs and dictators, and then consuls again controlled the Republic for close to 464 years, until Julius Caesar, who was the frst to seize sole rule, in the 183rd Olympiad.32 For Orosius, Caesar is a ‘surveyor’ (metator) of the empire rather than an emperor himself (7.2.14, 3:19). The recognition of Caesar as anything more than another Roman military leader is included only to demonstrate a synchronicity between the Babylonian kings Ninus and Belus and the Roman emperors Augustus and Caesar, noted by Fear (7.2.13–14, 3:19).33 Characteristically, Orosius avoids fabrication but manipulates history to complement the ideological reinterpretation of the past. Caesar is not erased from the narrative, but he is not entirely represented either, creating a new Christian foundation narrative centred on Augustus. The fgure of Augustus needs to be transformed textually from a military leader consumed with the evils of civil war (6.18.1–3, 3:216) into the most divine earthly ruler under whom the Incarnation can occur (6.20.5, 3:227–8). This is effected by a concentration on naming and titling in Book 6. The predisposition of the text towards Augustus as central to the spread of Christianity and peace is directly juxtaposed with the identity of Octavian: while ‘still a young man, [he] dedicated his genius to civil wars. For to unfold an accumulation of evils briefy, he carried on fve civil wars’ (6.18.1–2, 2:267).34 As a precursor to Augustus, ‘Octavian’ succeeds to power as yet another ambitious political military leader within a narrative that revolves around historical personalities like Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and the wars they fought. Conversely, ‘Augustus’ as a political leader is sanitized for the purpose of the Incarnation of Christ. The supersession of ‘Octavian’ and ‘Caesar’ and adoption of the name ‘Augustus’ is a key element in Orosius’s political theology, immediately converting the status of the emperor from a belligerent general into the divinely chosen ruler under whom Christ was born and universal peace was achieved.35 Orosius returns to the preoccupation with imperial titulature at the end of Book 6. He closely paraphrases Suetonius’s Divus Augustus (53), where Augustus refuses the title dominus, ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’ (6.22.4, 2:235). Augustus’s refusal of the title is presented as an act of Christian deference rather than modesty, false or sincere, for personal political motivations: ‘At the same time, this man to whom universal supremacy was conceded, did not permit himself to be called “lord of men”, rather dared not, when the true Lord of the whole human race was born among men’ (6.22.5, 2:281).36 It is possible that dominus was associated too strongly with the dichotomy between master and slave to be palatable to Augustus.37 The acceptance or refusal of the title became a marker of imperial character: seemingly

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modest emperors like Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius rejected the title dominus, while autocratic emperors like Caligula, Domitian, and Commodus insisted on its use.38 The imagery of Christ as a servant, ‘although he was in the image of God’ (6.17.10, 2:266), prefgures Augustus’s rejection of dominus, justifying the titling of Christ as dominus instead while attesting to his humility.39 The pagan affliations of the emperor are elided in the portrayal of Augustus as an unwitting Christian, the princeps or ‘frst man’ as the frst Christian even without his knowledge.40 Orosius reaches to the extremes in his reinterpretation of the Roman past, appropriating events in the vita of Augustus from earlier pagan sources to complement a very different ideological agenda that foregrounds the parallels between Christ and Augustus. The metamorphosis of Octavian or Caesar into Augustus is instantaneous and is specifcally dated to 6 January 27 BCE: On this day [6 January], Caesar was frst saluted as Augustus, which name had been inviolate up to that time by all, and up to the present had not been presumed by other rulers, and declares that the supreme power to rule the world is lawful. From this same day, the highest power in the state began to be in one man and has remained so, which the Greeks call monarchy. (6.20.2–3, 2:274–5)41 The sixth of January is a date imbued with a series of signifcant events: it is the day that Augustus is frst saluted or greeted (consalutatus est) with his new title, and from this point, there is no reversion back to Octavian. The name ‘Augustus’ is distinguished as one that had been previously ‘inviolate’ (inviolatum) to all other rulers, giving a sacral signifcance to the name and a sense of predestination.42 The title functions to legitimize the authority of the emperor as ‘the supreme power to rule the world’. It is ‘from this same day’ (ex eadem die) that ‘the highest power in the state’ began and remained (coepit et mansit) in one man in a political rule that blurs the distinction between imperial and monarchical rule. Beginning with Augustus, Orosius identifes the rule of monarchy as continuing through the imperial genealogical succession ‘up to the present’.43 The narrative of Augustus drives the reader towards a predetermined conclusion ultimately demonstrating the convergence of Roman authority and Christianity, of which the titling of Augustus is a crucial element.

The Epiphany Orosius’s distinctive use of history knits together past events, attaching a new signifcance to them. The manifestation of universal peace occurring on 6 January, explicitly recognized in the text as the Epiphany of Christ, is aligned with the titling of Augustus.44 The interrelations between these events are presented as evidence, intended to reinforce the argument of the

The emperor and the divine 85 divinely ordained authority of Rome under Augustus and the emperor as a precursor to Christ (it is useful to quote the passage again here, in full):45 In the seven hundred and twenty-ffth year after the founding of the City, when the emperor himself, Caesar Augustus, for the ffth time, and L. Apuleius were consuls, returning from the East as victor, on the sixth of January entered the City with a triple triumph and, then, for the frst time, since all civil wars had been put to sleep and been ended, he himself closed the gates of Janus. On this day, Caesar was frst saluted as Augustus, which name had been held inviolate up to that time by all, and up to the present had not been presumed by other rulers, and declares that the supreme power to rule the world is lawful. From this same day, the highest power in the state began to be in one man and has remained so, which the Greeks call monarchy. Furthermore, there is no believer, or even one who contradicts the faith, who does not know that this is the same day, namely, in the sixth of January, on which we observe the Epiphany, that is the Apparition or the Manifestation of the Sacrament of the Lord. (6.20.1–3, 2:274–5)46 The crux of the political theology, or more accurately, the ‘AugustusTheologie’ as Erik Peterson terms it, is here brought to a climax.47 Numerous strands are brought together within the crucible of the Epiphany. The formal adoption of the title Augustus, the triple adventus of Augustus on his return to Rome, the closing of the gates of Janus and inauguration of peace, and the foundation of the Roman empire, all according to divine providence concur with the feast of the Epiphany. Combined with the metamorphosis of Augustus into a divinely appointed monarch, the Epiphany is a crucial juncture within the text, and has wider repercussions especially for the understanding of the early Christian development of liturgical festivals.48 Orosius’s approach to the Epiphany exposes his authorial objectives, and how far he is willing to reach to achieve them, especially in his negotiation of the traditions established by his contemporaries like Jerome and Augustine.49 Orosius’s historiographical approach that exploits maximal contingency by tying events together, however, has its limitations. Although the Epiphany is a central point in the text, reference to the festival occurs only once (included in the quotation above). Subsequent references are euphemistic: ‘on that very day which we have mentioned above’ (6.20.8, 2:276).50 The brevity of the passage and the deliberate ambiguity of language obscures what precisely is being commemorated; it is diffcult to know what Orosius means in the apparitionem sive manifestationem Dominici sacramenti (6.20.3, 2:227). This ambiguity refects the continuing development of the Epiphany as a festival in the early ffth century, that various traditions existed alongside one another rather than one established and homogenized festival.51 Orosius’s desire to create an impregnable political theology leads him to slide date and events together, but the Epiphany constrains his approach,

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and his extended reach to create monoliths of less than straightforward narrative elements cannot quite achieve its grasp. The tradition of what the Epiphany commemorated in the late ancient Mediterranean is complex, and resists T. E. Mommsen’s clear division of interpretation between the eastern and western Mediterranean in his important article.52 One interpretation, the tria miracula, saw the Epiphany as a commemoration of the visit of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and the miracle at Cana.53 In the western Mediterranean, following Augustine’s interpretation, 6 January ultimately developed almost exclusively to commemorate the visitation of the Magi.54 While it is diffcult to discern how far Augustine’s beliefs effected a wider acceptance, Mommsen emphasizes his infuence on the Roman Church in reducing the Epiphany to the liturgical commemoration of the adoration of the Magi.55 Orosius’s caution in presenting an opposing view has been interpreted as clear evidence that his opinion transgressed Augustine’s.56 An alternative eastern view gave the Epiphany a deeper meaning: 6 January commemorated the baptism of Christ in the river Jordan, the miracle of Cana, and, as opposed to 25 December, the birth of Christ.57 Mommsen interprets Orosius’s statement on the Epiphany, ‘that is, the Apparition or the Manifestation of the Sacrament of the Lord’, as referring not to the birth of Christ but as the celebration of his baptism: This passage [6.20.3–5, 2:227–8] shows clearly that the feast of the Epiphany signifed to Orosius the celebration of the establishment of the sacrament of Baptism: it commemorated the day on which Christ, through his baptism by John, was manifested to mankind by the voice from heaven.58 However, it is diffcult to sustain the argument that Orosius’s understanding of the Epiphany included the baptism of Christ or the visit of the Magi, as neither is mentioned in the Historiae, especially when the birth of Christ is a central part of the work.59 Rohrbacher identifes the Epiphany as celebrating the appearance of the Magi, but except for the fact that this is ultimately how the tradition of the Epiphany developed in the western Mediterranean, there is no evidence that Orosius understood the Epiphany in these terms.60 Following Aponius, according to Orosius the Epiphany celebrates the birth and not the baptism of Christ.61 Mommsen’s assumption of the Epiphany as the baptism of Christ is presumably based upon the reference to the festival as the ‘Sacrament of the Lord’ (6.20.3, 2:275).62 But a literal interpretation of Orosius’s terminology may not be accurate, and there is evidence within the text that contradicts Mommsen’s inference. Crucially, at the very beginning of the text, Orosius dates the birth of Christ to the forty-second year of Augustus’s rule: But from Ninus or Abraham to Caesar Augustus, that is, to the birth of Christ, which was in the forty-second year of the Caesar’s rule, when

The emperor and the divine 87 the gates of Janus were closed, for peace had been made with the Parthians and wars had ceased in the whole world, 2,015 years have passed… (1.1.6, 1:6)63 But at 6.20.1–5, as quoted above (85), Orosius dates the Epiphany to the 725th year from the founding of the City, when Augustus was consul for the ffth time, celebrated a triple triumph, and for the frst time, ‘since all civil wars had been put to sleep and been ended, he himself closed the gates of Janus’ (6.20.1, 2:274).64 When examined together with the reference to the birth of Christ in Book 1, which is dated by the closure of the gates of Janus, peace with the Parthians, and the universal cessation of all wars, it is clear that the Epiphany receives two contradictory dates in the Historiae. And yet, focusing on the precise date of the birth and baptism of Christ risks misrepresenting Orosius’s approach. The synchronization between the Roman empire and Christianity that centres on the Epiphany is elsewhere referred to using a veiled terminology, often simply as the birth of Christ: ‘when the affairs of Augustus Caesar had been arranged, the Lord Christ was born, who, although he was an image of God, humbly took on the image of a servant’ (6.17.10, 2:266, my italics).65 Again in Book 6, Orosius poses the question, ‘What could be more obvious than that this sign [the portent of oil] declared that the birth of Christ would occur when Caesar ruled the whole world?’ (6.20.6, 2:275–6, my italics).66 At the conclusion of Book 6 it is ‘by the ordination of God’ that when Augustus ‘achieved the strongest and truest peace…Christ was born, upon whose coming that peace waited and at whose birth as men listened, the angels in exultation sang’ (6.22.5, 2:281, my italics).67 Orosius encourages the reader to understand the ‘coming’ and ‘birth’ of Jesus as synonymous, eschewing the representation of the Incarnation and the birth of Christ as separate festivals within the Church: ‘…God deemed it right to be seen as, and become, a man. Christ was therefore born at this time’ (6.22.6, 2:281).68 Orosius works hard to invest the Epiphany with meaning by attributing many events within it and eliding 25 December as the celebration of the Nativity. The point within Book 6 where the argument is forced to be made explicitly (6.20.3–5, 2:227–8) reveals its diffculty. Orosius was likely to have been aware that he was proposing an argument that many fellow Christians including Augustine would disagree with, despite Orosius’s assertion to the contrary.69 The representation of the birth of Christ as the Epiphany on 6 January and the elision of 25 December within the text is not quite comprehensive. At the beginning of Book 7 the date of the Nativity as 25 December is included, in order to bring together yet more providential events. Orosius is here interested in aligning the reigns of Ninus and Belus with Augustus and Caesar: …so in the time of that Caesar [Augustus], almost at the close of the forty-second year after he began to rule, Christ was born, who had been

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The emperor and the divine promised to Abraham in the rule of Ninus, the frst king. Now He was born on the twenty-ffth of December, as soon as all the increase of the coming year begins. (7.2.13–17, 3:287)70

The birth of Abraham took place in the forty-third year of Ninus’s rule, and Christ was born in the forty-second year of Augustus’s reign.71 The monarchical rules of Ninus and Augustus therefore provide the context for the providential events of the birth of Abraham, from whom Christ is descended, and Christ’s birth. Rulers of empire provide a secure dating system for events within sacred history: as Ninus is the ‘frst of all the kings’ (7.2.13, 3:287), so Augustus is the frst of all the emperors (7.2.4, 3:19), with the added dimension of Belus tentatively presented as a predecessor to his son Ninus, and Julius Caesar, represented as Augustus’s father, similarly as ‘more a surveyor of the Empire than an emperor’ (7.2.14, 3:287).72 These typological parallels demonstrate the reliability of Christian scriptural prophecy, with the fulflment of the Old Testament (Ninus and Abraham) in the New Testament (Augustus and Christ). In the providential and progressive Christian teleology that dominates the apologetic, Ninus and the birth of Abraham are echoed by Augustus and the birth of Christ, but all events are eclipsed by the coming of the Messiah, demonstrated by the exact chronological point of the Nativity on 25 December.73 With an echo of Pauline theology, Christ pre-empts the synchronization with Abraham and Ninus in his birth occurring ‘not in a part of the third year, but rather the third year was born in Him’ (7.2.17, 3:287).74 The Historiae positions the birth of Christ as a fundamental shift in time; a new age has begun.75 Orosius strives to prove this not only as a theological truth but also as an inherent aspect of his historiographical vision. The sudden reversal in differentiating 25 December as the Nativity from the Epiphany is revealing about Orosius’s approach to the past. The conscious deliberation over the representation of the most important events in Christianity is exposed by the willingness with which Orosius shapes dates, times, and events to his apologetical motivations: the creation of a persuasive rhetoric is paramount. Orosius’s presentation of the Epiphany and the Nativity was not determined by confusion or error. The Nativity and the Epiphany are both crucial events to a Christian history but are mentioned specifcally once only, revealing the strain under which Orosius was exposing his narrative and the rhetorical integrity of his argument. The importance of the accuracy of representing historical events even within the life of Christ is transcended by the necessary moulding of the historical material. Orosius’s ease in this authorial approach suggests that a multiplicious version of history may not be as anathema in the early ffth century as modern historiographical expectations would suppose.76 Van Nuffelen has argued that ‘[l]arge tracts of the Historiae are hardly ever read, or make no impact on the overall interpretation of the work’.77 The desire, therefore, to obscure certain key logical elements of the text contributed to the work extending

The emperor and the divine 89 beyond its self-imposed boundaries of brevity in order to make such alterations to the material of history appear inconspicuous. While the ambiguity cultivated around the representation of the Epiphany and the Nativity is usually explained by Orosius’s unwillingness to contradict an established tradition, particularly Augustine’s views, it is more likely a consequence of the impossible chronology that underpins Orosius’s creative historiographical management of events.78 He incorporates the Epiphany into the tissue of synchronisms at the transitional moment in the representation of Augustus, which is dated 725 years after the founding of Rome (6.20.1–4). But the third and fnal closure of the temple of Janus, dated 752 years ab urbe condita, coincides expressly with the year of Christ’s birth: ‘So at that time, that is, in that year in which, by the ordination of God, Caesar achieved the strongest and truest peace, Christ was born’ (6.22.5, 2:281).79 The Epiphany of Christ is here located within an impossible chronology, predating the birth of Christ by twenty-seven years. In light of this, it seems much more likely that Orosius hoped to link the birth of the Roman empire with the Epiphany in 725 and 752 ab urbe condita but mentions it only briefy in order to conceal the impossible chronology rather than to avoid contradicting contemporary ideas about what the feast of the Epiphany commemorated. These manipulations of narrative, time, and history reveal Orosius’s ideological approach to the past, where the necessity for accuracy is suspended if the benevolent providentialism of a Christian Roman empire can be established. Syme argued that the confusion in the Historiae is deliberate, describing Orosius’s authorial choices as not ‘innocent or inadvertent’.80 But the question of why Orosius would risk exposing the text in such a way, potentially weakening the conviction of the argument, is signifcant. Paradoxically, the purpose seems to be to strengthen the rhetorical argument of Book 6. Orosius wants to fnd the synchronization that is so important in more than one place. Repetition of the synchronization achieves this aim, so that an initial correspondence with the Epiphany provides a platform to reach higher levels of synchronization in the Nativity. This is illustrated by the use of peace in both instances. The frst synchronization (6.20.1–4, 2:226–7) sees the end of all civil war; the synchronization at the conclusion to Book 6 (6.22.1–9, 2:234–7) sees the establishment of a universal peace. The Historiae is built around the certainty of constant improvement and renewal from the point of the Incarnation, and this upward trajectory necessitates a particular emphasis on supersession. The necessity to build upon and exceed is fulflled by repetition. Reticence concerning the Epiphany at 6.20.4 (2:227) can therefore be explained in alternative terms, as a deliberate policy that avoided drawing attention to the event of the Incarnation preceding the birth of Christ within the construction of a problematic chronology.81 But the repetition of the evidence Orosius fnds in associating Roman secular history with key Christian events that is intended to strengthen the rhetorical conviction of the argument makes the risk expedient. Indeed, the lack of attention this has generated makes Orosius’s risk arguably a calculated one.

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The ambiguity of Orosius’s conception of the Epiphany is refected in the interpretation of later sources. Writing in the seventh century, Isidore of Seville frames his discussion of the Epiphany in the Etymologiae in very similar terms to Orosius, making it likely that the Historiae was his source: ‘The Greek term “Epiphany” (Epiphania) is “appearance” (apparitio) in Latin, for on that day, when the star led the way, Christ appeared to the Magi to be worshipped.’82 Although initially Isidore suggests that the Epiphany primarily commemorated the visitation of the Magi, it is added that the Epiphany includes the baptism of Christ and the miracle of water into wine.83 Then, Isidore states that there were in fact ‘two epiphanies’, when the newborn Christ appeared to the shepherds heralded by an angel, and when the star guided the Magi to Christ.84 In emphasizing the visit of the Magi, Isidore departs from the Orosian interpretation of the Epiphany, and his creation of an additional ‘Epiphany’ illustrates one way of dealing with the numerous traditions that require integration. Isidore’s approach to the Epiphany refects the obscurity in Orosius’s presentation that enables a variety of interpretations. This ambivalence enables fexibility; in other places, Isidore can refer to the same event as the Nativity or the Coming of Christ rather than the Epiphany, avoiding polarization and concealing contradiction.

Evidence in the miraculous: rainbows and fountains of oil The providential synchronism of the Epiphany with the foundation of the Roman empire does not function in isolation; Orosius reorientates traditionally pagan prodigies to further reinforce the alignment of Rome and Christ. These portents originally revealed the divine favour of the pagan gods towards Augustus, but Orosius Christianizes them to signal the coming of Christ.85 The portent of a rainbow encircling the sun heralding Augustus’s return to Rome is given by a deeper theological interpretation: …as if to point out Augustus as the one and the most powerful man in this universe and the most renowned man in the world, in whose time He was to come who alone had made the sun itself and the whole world and was ruling them. (6.20.5, 2:275)86 Orosius sets out his evidence of the miracles associated with Augustus systematically as numbered ‘proofs’, designed to demonstrate irrefutably that ‘in every respect the Empire of Caesar might be proven to have been prepared for Christ’s coming’ (6.20.8, 2:276).87 The rainbow illuminating Augustus as a universal ruler is more explicitly evident in other, pagan sources, such as Velleius Paterculus, where the appearance of the rainbow as Augustus enters the city is similarly providential and likened to a coronation.88 Orosius pushes the miracle beyond its pagan origins to indicate Augustus as a universal secular ruler mirroring the universal divine rule of Christ.

The emperor and the divine 91 Orosius mobilizes a second piece of evidence to reinforce the providential synchronization of Rome with Christ in ‘a most abundant spring of oil’ which ‘fowed for a whole day from an inn’ that heralds Augustus’s entry into the city of Rome (6.20.6, 2:275).89 Associated with the miracle are the annulment of all debts of the Roman populace, the restoration of 30,000 slaves, and the distribution of legions ‘for the protection of the world’ (6.20.6, 2:228), all designed to reinforce Augustus not as a local or even a national but a universal monarch. The fons olei or fountain of oil is a reference to the miracle of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, a narrative Orosius derives from Eusebius-Jerome’s Chronicon.90 Like other miracles, Orosius appropriates it to prove that ‘the future nativity of Christ was declared in the time when Caesar was ruling the whole world’ (6.20.6, 2:275).91 The fountain of oil is intended to portend both the coming of Christ and the impending transition of ‘Caesar’ to ‘Augustus’. Orosius pointedly associates the fountain of oil in Rome and the etymology of ‘Christ’, χρῑστός meaning ‘anointed’ in Greek, ‘the language of his people’ (6.20.6, 2:275).92 Orosius’s elision of the biblical east has been previously acknowledged, and signifcantly this is one of the few anomalies to suggest that the biblical narrative of Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection was not centred on the Latin western Mediterranean.93 The ‘signs in the heavens and prodigies on earth’, including the spring of oil, are designed to demonstrate that: under the principate of Caesar and under the Roman Empire throughout a whole day, namely throughout the duration of the entire Roman Empire, Christ and from Him, Christians, that is, the Anointed ones, would come forth in abundance and without cessation from an inn – from the hospitable and bountiful Church. (6.20.7, 2:276)94 The reader is carefully guided here; Orosius invests a singular, literal meaning in the metaphorical that has a clear and irresistible signifcance. One day refects the history of the Empire, Christ represents Christians, and like the fountain of oil Christians are destined to forever perpetuate from the institution of the Church. This type of categorical reasoning is characteristic of Orosius’s representation of the fundamental tenets of Christianity that does not demand the reader to leap to understand, but to accept the comprehensive argument presented in the text.

Christ and the census While the Historiae repeatedly seeks new ways to Christianize Augustus, the ‘Romanization’ of Christ is not entirely neglected. As with the emphasis on Augustus’s titles as a designation of status, Orosius places Christ on the Roman census: So at that time, that is, in that year in which, by the ordination of God, Caesar achieved the strongest and truest peace, Christ was born…

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The emperor and the divine Also in this same year, when God deigned to be seen as man and actually to be man, Caesar, whom God had predestined for this great mystery, ordered that a census be taken of each province everywhere and that all men be enrolled. So at that time, Christ was born and was entered on the Roman census list as soon as he was born. This is the earliest and most famous public acknowledgement which marked Caesar as the frst of all men and the Romans as lords of the world, a published list of all men entered individually, on which He Himself, who made all men, wished Himself to be found as man and enrolled among men. (6.22.5–7, 2:281)95

Orosius either deliberately or mistakenly ignores that the decree of universal citizenship, the constitutio Antoniniana, was not made until 212 CE by the emperor Caracalla, and that prior to this Christ would not have been recognized as a Roman citizen.96 Up to this point, Orosius echoes the Gospel of Luke, which records that ‘In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.’ Orosius here elaborates on the Gospel account, claiming that Jesus was actually entered onto the census record.97 Orosius’s version of the census begins with the Gospel of Luke, as well as the Orosian version of the Nativity and visitation of the Magi. The Magi’s visit is absent from the Historiae as it is from Luke, but is recorded in Matthew.98 Orosius’s close following of Luke is demonstrated by the inclusion of a biblical quotation from the Gospel, when the angels sang to glorify the birth of Christ: So at that time, that is, in that year in which, by the ordination of God, Caesar achieved the strongest and truest peace, Christ was born, upon whose coming that peace waited and at whose birth as men listened, the angels in exultation sang: ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will’. (6.22.5, 2:281; Luke 2:14)99 Just as Augustine favours one Gospel narrative over another concerning the meaning of the Epiphany, so Orosius’s exegetical interpretation involves a selection and elision of competing biblical accounts of the life of Christ moulded within a new historical and apologetical context of RomanoChristian history. The notion of Christ as a Roman citizen, although not widely adopted and reproduced, did not originate with Orosius, as Tertullian’s oblique reference to Christ’s enrolment in the census of Augustus in his Adversus Marcionem from the third century CE makes clear.100 The assertion of Christ as a citizen of Rome fulfls the same function for Tertullian and Orosius, providing evidence of Christ’s birth and Incarnation as well as political allegiance, substantiated by the physical evidence of the census records in archives in Rome that Tertullian alludes to.101 The political impact of this claim made

The emperor and the divine 93 by both Tertullian and Orosius, but with much greater emphasis in the Historiae, is far-reaching and signifcant: From the foundation of the world and from the beginning of the human race, an honour of this nature had absolutely never been granted in this manner, not even to Babylon or to Macedonia, not to mention any lesser kingdom. It is undoubtedly clear for the understanding of all, from their faith and investigation, that our Lord Jesus Christ brought forward this City to this pinnacle of power, prosperous and protected by His will; of this City, when he came, He especially wished to be called a Roman citizen by the declaration of the Roman census list. (6.22.7–8, 2:281–2)102 Orosius’s testimony of Christ as a Roman citizen makes evident the providential will of God that favoured Rome as a political institution and as an empire above all others in history. Here, the political and religious hegemony of Rome and Christianity are tied together; it is as a Christian empire that Orosius sees the past, present, and future success of Rome. The earlier prominence of the Orosian theory of the four empires comes back into currency where the Babylonian, Macedonian, and ‘any lesser kingdom’ are absorbed into the supremacy of the Roman empire, substantiated by the status of Christ as a Roman citizen. The physical, cultural, and martial superiority of the Roman empire has already been frmly established. Now, from the Creation, the entirety of human history is encompassed and subsumed within the apologetical schema of the authority of the empire. As we have seen, the miraculous Epiphany transforms the emperor Augustus from simply a political fgure into a ‘tool’ of God, an instrument of divine providence whose unique investment is portended by fountains of oil and rainbows in the sky: …neither Augustus nor the Christian Constantine I represent for Orosius personalities who act on their own, but they much rather act as instruments of God. Jesus and Augustus serve as the decisive turning point in world history’s progress from evil toward the good.103 The rise of Augustus prefgures the Incarnation of Christ, shown most clearly by the miracles of the rainbow and the fountain of oil that portend his assumption of imperial authority, and events such as his rejection of dominus as a title and the decreed census. Augustus mirrors Jesus Christ, suggested by the panegyrical treatment of the emperor, the elision of authority from the many gods to the one God, the many forms of government to the one emperor, and the divine providence of God in the rule of Augustus on earth and Christ in heaven. Fear sees Augustus as ‘the divinely ordained secular precursor’ to Christ104; Mommsen argues that Augustus is credited with a ‘mundane Epiphany’105; and Inglebert understands Augustus as the image

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of Christ.106 The correlation between Christ and Augustus intentionally erodes the distinction between the two fgures, making Roman and Christian history synonymous.

Conclusion The fgurative and literal associations Orosius constructs between Augustus and Christ can at frst seem straightforward and even self-evident. These associations underpin the Orosian ideology of Christian peace and harmony that deals broadly and boldly with the events of the past, and tends to homogenize specifcs. The determined analogy of the Roman empire and Christianity has been critically interpreted as a necessary yet banal aspect of Orosius’s political theology. Closer attention, however, demonstrates that it is characterized by ambiguity, deliberate confusion, and contradiction. The Nativity and the Epiphany are made to occur impossibly at the same time as Augustus accedes to Roman imperial rule, Christ is enrolled on the census as a Roman citizen, and the association between the fountain of oil at Trastevere and Christ as ‘the anointed one’ is tendentious. The imbalance in Orosius’s authorial approach to Christianize Rome rather than Romanizing Christianity is particularly evident where the emphasis shifts to Romanizing Christ rather than Christianizing Augustus; it is fraught with tension and contradiction, an uncomfortable reminder that Orosius is operating beyond his prevailing method of establishing the providentialism of a Christian Roman empire. Orosius’s rhetoric, driven by his political theology, operates on a universal scale. But despite the reach of his approach, it is in fact highly selective and localized. The Historiae is shaped by a homogenizing apologetic that elides the institutional Church as well as more theologically orientated aspects of Christianity, such as Augustine’s two cities. Internal political Church wranglings over episcopal elections and exiles, Church councils, and questions of heterodoxy and orthodoxy are ignored. While Orosius’s other works, the Commonitorium and the Liber apologeticus, show his familiarity with scripture, the Historiae offers few scriptural allusions.107 And yet, to align history with scripture would seem a priority for a Christianized reinterpretation of classical historiography.108 Instead, Orosius chooses to rely more on secular classical pagan texts, peppering the Historiae with allusions and quotations from Homer and, most frequently, Virgil.109 Orosius’s aggressive rewriting of the past stakes a claim on classical pagan culture, not as an appropriation, but as a refutation. The anti-religious establishment approach in preference for political institutions and religious affliation allows the elision of paganism and the Church in favour of a purifed version of Christianity where Christ is all, the political authority of the emperor on earth mirrors the divine authority of Christ in heaven, and the world is united in a Christian commonwealth of peace, harmony, and political accord. Orosius’s status-quo bias towards

The emperor and the divine 95 existing political systems and aversion to religious institutionalism centralizes Christ and Augustus as metonyms made to carry only certain associations, such as universal peace and benevolent political authority. Despite its provocative absences, the Historiae is undoubtedly a Christian text. But what it omits, disguised under a veil of universalism, ambiguity, and an irresistible apologetic drive, obscures the complexity and innovation in Orosius’s approach that would set the course of Christian historiography towards providentialism for centuries to come.

Notes 1 1.3.1, 1:42: …rectum atque inmaculatum…ac perinde humanum genus, libidinibus depravatum peccatis obsorduisset. 2 Although humanum genus, ‘human race’, is used to describe humanity at the opening of Book 1 (1.1.3, 1:10), the noun homo, hominis is more frequently used and is usually translated as ‘man’ or ‘mankind’. While this is not a genderinclusive translation, it will be used as the Historiae is not gender-inclusive; the textual attention that women are given is exceptional and fantastical. For instance, the description of Amazonian women burning off their right breasts in order to better shoot arrows (1.15.3, 1:64), or the numerous incidents of Vestal sexual transgression and punishment: 2.8.13, 1:102; 3.9.5, 1:150; 4.2.8, 2:15; 4.5.9, 2:19; 5.15.22, 2:117. On the representation of Vestal virgins in the Historiae, see Victoria Leonard, ‘Nefarious Acts and Sacrilegious Sacrifces: Live Burial in the Historia adversus paganos’, in Hierà kaì lógoi: Estudios de literatura y de religión en la Antigüedad Tardía, ed. by Alberto J. Quiroga Puertas (Zaragoza: Libros Pórtico, 2011), 395–410. For a consideration of gender-exclusive and patriarchal language in Augustine, see Catherine Conybeare, ‘Augustine’s The City of God (Fifth Century A.D.): Patriarchy, Pluralism and the Creation of Man’, in Patriarchal Moments: Reading Patriarchal Texts (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 43–8. For a wider consideration of women and gender in early Christianity, see Blossom Stefaniw, ‘Feminist Historiography and Uses of the Past’, Studies in Late Antiquity 4, no. 3 (2020): 277. 3 5.24.21, 2:153: …et malis sequacibus cohaeserunt. 4 2.14.3, 2:112: Aethna ipsa quae tunc cum excidio urbium atque agrorum crebris eruptionibus aestuabat, nunc tantum innoxia specie ad praeteritorum fdem fumat. 5 See A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 58; Zachary Sayre Schiffman, The Birth of the Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 118; Andreas Mehl, Roman Historiography: An Introduction to Its Basic Aspects and Development, trans. by Hans-Friedrich Mueller (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 234; Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History 400-1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 59–81. For a more detailed exploration of the relationship between Orosius, Lactantius, and Eusebius, see Hervé Inglebert, Les Romains chrétiens face à l’histoire de Rome: histoire, christianisme et romanités en Occident dans l’Antiquité tardive (IIIe-Ve siècles) (Paris: Institut d’études Augustiniennes, 1996), where Orosius’s Historiae is described as the renewal of Latin ‘eusebianism’, 507–89, especially 513, and Eugenio Corsini, Introduzione alle ‘Storie’ di Orosio (Turin: University of Turin, 1968), 97–8.

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6 R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 161–2; Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 151–2; 189. 7 Ronald Syme, ‘Problems about Janus’, The American Journal of Philology 100, no. 1 (1979): 197; Erik Peterson, Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. by Michael J. Hollerich (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011), 102. 8 References to the temple of Janus in the Historiae: 1.1.6, 1:10–11; 3.8.2, 1:148; 3.8.4, 1:149; 4.12.4, 2:40; 4.12.6, 2:40–1; 6.20.1, 2:226; 6.20.8, 2:229; 6.21.1, 2:229; 6.21.11, 2:231; 6.22.1, 2:234; 7.2.16, 3:20; 7.3.7–9, 3:21–2; 7.9.9, 3:39–40; 7.19.4, 3:54–5. Syme, ‘Problems about Janus’, 197, described Janus as ‘a theme of predilection in Orosius from the outset…and close to his general design and demonstration’. For the temple in the ancient sources, see Procopius, De bello gothico 5.25; Plutarch, Numa 20.1; Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.19.2; Varro, Lingua latina 5.165; Servius, ad Aeneid 7.607; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.9.17–18; Pliny, Naturalis historia 34.33; Cassius Dio 74.14; Seneca, Divi Claudii apocolocyntosis 9; Ovid, Fasti 1.258. The opening and closing of the doors have an alternative origin, that during battle against the Sabines a great force of hot water originating from the temple repelled the enemy, establishing the custom of opening the doors of the temple in a time of war. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.9.17–18; Servius, ad Aeneid 8.361. Rabun Taylor, ‘Watching the Skies: Janus, Auspication and the Shrine in the Roman Forum’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 45 (2000): 1–40 considers the possible forms and locations of the temple. For the representation of Janus in earlier Roman literature, see Jeri Blair DeBrohun, ‘The Gates of War (and Peace): Roman Literary Perspectives’, in War and Peace in the Ancient World, ed. by Kurt A. Raafaub (London: Blackwell, 2007), 256–78. For a later reinterpretation of the signifcance of Janus in Roman history informed by Orosius, see Paul the Deacon’s Historia romana, which begins not with the foundation of Rome or the rule of monarchy but with Janus ruling Italy. 9 Ovid, Fasti 1.1. See Taylor, ‘Watching the Skies’, 1. 10 Filippo Coarelli, Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 51. A small structure located on the south-eastern corner of the Basilica Aemilia in the Forum has been suggested, but is disputed by Amanda Claridge as being part of a later and larger structure built over the steps of the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius. Amanda Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 69. Coarelli explains the location adjacent to the Basilica Aemilia as the fnal reconstruction of the temple after the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 CE, following which the basilica was also restored. See Coarelli, Rome and Environs, 49. The fnal reference to the physical temple is given in the sixth century by Procopius, De bello gothico 1.25. For an image of the temple, the numismatic evidence from the reign of Nero is most useful. 11 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.19. Similarly see Pliny, Naturalis historia 34.33; Plutarch, Numa 18. 12 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.19; Ovid, Fasti 1.281. 13 Varro, Lingua latina 5.165; Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.19; Ovid, Fasti 1.281. 14 Res gestae divi Augusti, 42–5; Suetonius, Augustus 22. L. Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 207–8. 15 3.8.2, 1:148: …et quamvis numquam post mortem Numae a bellorum cladibus fuisse cessatum patentes semper Iani portae indicent, ex eo tamen veluti per meridiem toto inpressus caelo malorum fervor incanduit.

The emperor and the divine 97 16 3.8.3, 1:148: Porro autem, inchoato semel bello Punico utrum aliquando bella caedes ruinae atque omnia infandarum mortium genera nisi Caesare Augusto imperante cessaverint, inquirat, inveniat, prodat quisquis infamanda Christiana tempora putat. 17 3.8.5, 1:149: …post Parthicam pacem universum terrarum orbem positis armis abolitisque discordiis generali pace et nova quiete conpositum… 18 3.8.6, 1:149: …unam fuisse voluntatem libero honestoque studio inservire paci atque in commune consulere. 19 Dated to 29 BCE. Syme, ‘Problems about Janus’, 197. 20 6.20.3, 2:227: …hoc est apparitionem sive manifestationem Dominici sacramenti… 21 praeteritio: 6.20.3, 2:227. 6.20.4, 2:227: De quo nostrae istius fdelissimae observationis sacramento uberius nunc dicere nec ratio nec locus fagitat, ut et quaerentibus reservasse et neglegentibus non ingessisse videamur. Hoc autem fdeliter commemorasse ideo par fuit, ut per omnia venturi Christi gratia praeparatum Caesaris imperium conprobetur. 22 6.20.1, 2:226–7: Anno ab urbe condita DCCXXV, ipso imperatore Caesare Augusto quinquies et L. Apuleio consulibus, Caesar victor ab Oriente rediens, VIII idus Ianuarius Vrbem triplici triumpho ingressus est ac tunc primum ipse Iani portas sopitis fnitisque omnibus bellis civilibus clausit. 23 It is described by Fear as a ‘concatenation of errors’. A. T. Fear, Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 308n300. 24 6.20.8, 2:276: ‘What can more faithfully and truthfully be believed and recognised, when peace, name, and day concur in such a manifestation, than that this man had been predestined, indeed, by a hidden order of events for the service of His preparation, who, on that day on which a little later He was to be made manifest to the world, chose the banner of peace, and assumed the name of power.’ 6.20.8, 2:229: quid fdelius ac verius credi aut cognosci potest, – concurrentibus ad tantam manifestationem pace, nomine, die, – quam hunc occulto quidem gestorum ordine ad obsequium praeparationis eius praedestinatum fuisse, qui eo die quo ille manifestandus mundo post paululum erat, et pacis signum praetulit, et potestatis nomen adsumpsit? 25 7.2.16, 3:20: toto terrarum orbe una pax omnium non cessatione sed abolitione bellorum, clausae Iani gemini portae extirpatis bellorum radicibus non repressis… 26 3.8.6–7, 1:149: postremo omnibus gentibus, cunctis provinciis, innumeris civitatibus, infnitis populis, totis terris unam fuisse voluntatem libero honestoque studio inservire paci atque in commune consulere – quod prius ne una quidem civitas unusve populus civium vel, quod maius est, una domus fratrum iugiter habere potuisset –; quodsi etiam, cum imperante Caesare ista provenerint, in ipso imperio Caesaris inluxisse ortum in hoc mundo Domini nostri Iesu Christi liquidissima probatione manifestum est. 27 3.8.8, 1:150: …exstitisse nec unius urbis imperatori sed creatori orbis universi orbem ipsum generali cognitione parvisse… 28 Compare with J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 80, who argues the direct opposite in his overestimation of the similarity between Augustine and Orosius: ‘Both writers – Orosius from Roman Spain, Augustine in Roman Africa, two provinces under Vandal attack – were faced with pagans blaming Christianity for the disasters of the times and responded with lengthy demonstrations that there had been just as many disasters in the ages before Christian revelation…It entailed the contention that Roman empire [sic] had not in fact brought peace to mankind, or been necessary to the coming of Christ and the growth of his salvifc church.’

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29 6.14.3, 2:203: Rursus post hanc domesticam intestinamque perniciem qua usque ad medullas paene eviscerata et exesa est, paribus propemodum spatiis temporum non solum reparata, verum etiam extenta est…Romanumque imperum usque ad extremos propemodum terrae terminos propagatum est. For the archetypal portrayal of the destructive impact of Rome’s empire within this context, see the presentation of Gaul, 6.12, 2: 199–201. 30 6.17.9, 2:215: Et tamen horum omnium malorum initium superbia est. 31 For an additional view, see Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 203: ‘Orosius and Augustine were not much interested in what we are terming Gibbon’s “frst decline and fall”, the Tacitean narrative of how the principate set up by Augustus failed to keep control of its succession problem and its armies; this was one reason why Julius rather than Augustus Caesar came to be imprecisely considered the frst princeps et imperator who had destroyed the republic.’ 32 Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, 67th Olympiad: Romae post exactos Reges primum consules duo a Bruto esse coeperunt; deinde tribuni plebis ac dictatores, et rursum consules rempublicam obtinuerunt per annos ferme CDLXIV usque ad Julium Caesarem, qui primus singulare arripuit imperium olympiade CLXXXIII. The signifcance of Caesar to the dating of the Chronicon is reinforced in other places: the 183rd Olympiad (48 BCE) opens with ‘Gaius Julius Caesar was the frst among the Romans to attain sole power, from whom Romans holding frst rank are called “Caesars”.’ Caesar is titled the ‘frst of the Romans’ and is recorded as ruling for four years and seven months, with the heading of the column changing from ‘Consuls’ to ‘Romans’. 33 Fear, Orosius, 322n19. 34 6.18.1–2, 2:216: …simul ut Romam adulescens admodum venit, indolem suam bellis civilibus vovit. Nam, ut breviter coacervationem malorum explicem, bella civilia quinque gessit. 35 For the choice of the name ‘Augustus’, see Ovid, Fasti 1.591–616; Florus, Epitoma 34; Cassius Dio 53.16.8. See also L. R. Taylor, ‘Livy and the Name Augustus’, The Classical Review 32, no. 7/8 (1918): 158–61; F. J. Haverfeld, ‘The Name Augustus’, Journal of Roman Studies 5 (1915): 249–50. 36 6.22.5, 2:235: Eodemque tempore hic ad quem rerum omnium summa concesserat dominum se hominum appellari non passus est, immo non ausus, quo verus dominus totius generis humani inter homines natus est. 37 For Augustus’s rejection of the title, see Suetonius, Augustus 53; Ovid, Fasti 2.142; Cassius Dio 57.8. 38 Carlos F. Noreña, Imperial Ideals in the Roman West: Representation, Circulation, Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 293. 39 6.17.10, 2:215–16: Itaque oportune conpositis rebus Augusti Caesaris natus est Dominus Christus qui, cum in forma Dei esset, formam servi humiliter adsumpsit… 40 On this idea, see Mehl, Roman Historiography, 234. Similarly, Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 163: ‘The ignorance of pagans of what drives history is symbolized in the fact that whilst Augustus is indeed raised because a series of his actions announce the birth of Christ, he himself is unaware of their signifcance. Strikingly, Augustus, as a sign in history, ignores his own meaning.’ 41 The precise date was 13 January 27 BCE, and is recorded in the Res gestae (34). 6.20.2–3, 2:227: Hoc die primum Augustus consalutatus est: quod nomen, cunctis antea inviolatum et usque ad nunc ceteris inausum dominis, tantum Orbis licite usurpatum apicem declarat imperii, atque ex eadem die summa rerum ac potestatum penes unum esse coepit et mansit; quod Graeci monarchiam vocant. 42 Although the title ‘Augustus’ became a standard element of imperial titulature in the succession of emperors following Augustus, Orosius’s observation that the name ‘up to the present had not been presumed by other rulers’ is in

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one sense correct; as Fear points out, there is no ‘Augustus II’. Fear, Orosius, 309n302. For the sacral signifcance of the name Augustus and the wider focus on his titling, see Florus, Epitoma 65–7. Tacitus, a source frequently excerpted in the Historiae, distinguishes between the rule of monarchy and the rule of princeps: ‘Yet he [Augustus] organized the state, not by instituting a monarchy or a dictatorship, but by creating the title of First Citizen.’ Tacitus, Annales 1.9: …[ut] ab uno regeretur, non regno tamen neque dictatura, sed principis nomine constitutam rem publicam. This synchronization is not unique to Orosius, as Mommsen has demonstrated in relation to Aponius’s corresponding interpretation in his Exposition on the Song of Songs. T. E. Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius on the Signifcance of the Epiphany’, in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by E. F. Rice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959), 299–325. ‘The attractiveness of the universal monarchy and the universal religion being “born” on the same day was simply too hard for the determined Orosius to resist.’ P. A. Onica, ‘Orosius’ (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1987), 129. Similarly Syme: ‘To the Spanish presbyter the Nativity (it was axiomatic) at once ushered in a period of profound peace.’ Syme, ‘Problems about Janus’, 197. 6.20.1–3, 2:226–7: Anno ab Vrbe condita DCCXXV, ipso imperatore Caesare Augusto quinquies et L. Apuleio consulibus, Caesar victor ab Oriente rediens, VIII idus Ianuarius Vrbem triplici triumpho ingressus est ac tunc primum ipse Iani portas sopitis fnitisque omnibus bellis civilibus clausit. Hoc die primum Augustus consalutatus est: quod nomen, cunctis antea inviolatum et usque ad nunc ceteris inausum dominis, tantum Orbis licite usurpatum apicem declarat imperii, atque ex eodem die summa rerum ac potestatum penes unum esse coepit et mansit; quod Graeci monarchium vocant. Porro autem hunc esse eundem diem, hoc est VIII idus Ianuarias quo nos Epiphania, hoc est apparitionem sive manifestationem Dominici sacramenti, observamus, nemo credentium sive etiam fdei contradicentium nescit. Erik Peterson, Monotheismus als politisches Problem: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum (Leipzig: Hegner, 1935), 88. For more on Peterson and the problematization of the Augustus-theology theory, see Elisa Manzo, ‘“Giudaismo” e Augustus-Theologie nelle Historiae adversus paganos di Orosio’ (PhD thesis, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 2021), especially 296–336. Mommsen uses the evidence of the Historiae to challenge the idea that the celebration of Christ’s baptism on the Epiphany did not start in Spain before the sixth or seventh century. In light of a different interpretation of what Orosius designates the Epiphany as, Mommsen’s argument retains its validity, assuming also that Orosius was Hispanic, but what the Epiphany in Hispania was in the early ffth century is contested. Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 313–14. For an emphasis on the latter, see Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’. 6.20.8, 2:229: …eo scilicet die quem supra nominavimus… The multiplicity in the ancient evidence is refected in modern criticism. Josef A. Jungmann states that the basic concept of the Epiphany was the coming of Christ into the world, the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the terminology used by Orosius. Jungmann goes on to argue that the baptism of Christ and the miracle of Cana are secondary. Josef A. Jungmann, The Early Liturgy to the Time of Gregory the Great, trans. by Francis A. Brunner (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1959), 150. For a different explanation, see Johnson: ‘… the baptism of Jesus, apparently understood as birth, was most solemnly celebrated. This made room for a shift in emphasis to his birth in Bethlehem to which initially, however, his baptism in the Jordan still remained attached…

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The emperor and the divine The continuing oscillation between the emphasis on either the birth or the baptism of Jesus as leitmotivs for the Feast of the Epiphany has to be understood as a preliminary step to the ultimate separation of the two themes of Epiphany during the fourth century: January 6 established itself predominantly as the feast of the baptism of Jesus, and a new separate feast was introduced, namely, the celebration of the birth of Jesus on 25 December.’ Maxwell E. Johnson (ed.), Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 345. Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 299–325. An example that disrupts Mommsen’s argument is the disparity between the Epiphany according to Ambrose of Milan and other North Italian bishops. See Martin F. Connell, ‘Did Ambrose’s Sister Become a Virgin on December 25 or January 6? The Earliest Western Evidence for Christmas and Epiphany outside Rome’, Studia Liturgica 29 (1999): 145–58. Robin A. Leaver and Joyce Ann Zimmerman (eds), Liturgy and Music: Lifetime Learning (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 25. In Ambrose’s Illuminans altissimus (Epiphany Hymn) the feast commemorates the baptism of Jesus, the visit of the Magi, the miracle at Cana, and the miracle of the multiplication of bread. Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 300. Augustine’s views are confrmed by his six sermons on the Epiphany. For Filastrius of Brescia in the fourth century, the Epiphany celebrates the visit of the Magi (9.304). See Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 300–1. For Augustine’s understanding of the Epiphany, see Sermo 200. Fear, Orosius, 309n303; Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 314–15. Perhaps this is unsurprising considering Augustine’s invective against the Donatists for not celebrating the Epiphany (Sermo 202.2). Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 300. Mommsen takes John Cassian’s Conferences 10 (On Prayer) 2 as the best illustration for understanding the Epiphany. Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 313. Fear adopts a similar interpretation: ‘While Augustine saw the epiphany as purely a commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, others, including the Eastern church and, from Orosius’s words, we may assume a substantial part of the Spanish church…saw the epiphany primarily as the commemoration of Christ’s own baptism and that baptism’s revelation of His mission on earth.’ Fear, Orosius, 309n303. The same argument is used by Mommsen but applied to Aponius when discussing his understanding of the Epiphany: ‘which event in Christ’s life did Aponius have in mind when he spoke of “the day of his apparitio, which is called Epiphany”? From the context it is evident that he meant the day of Christ’s birth… in the whole context there is to be found not the slightest reference either to the adoration of the Magi or to Christ’s baptism by John. It is certain, therefore, that to Aponius the word Epiphany, or its Latin equivalent apparitio, signifed the birth of Christ in the fesh.’ Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 306–7. David Rohrbacher, ‘Orosius’, in The Historians of Late Antiquity (Routledge: London, 2002), 142. Peterson offers no comment on what Orosius meant the Epiphany to be besides ‘the day on which Christ appeared’, which refects the ambiguity and use of language in the Historiae. See also Peterson, Theological Tractates, 100. Aponius, In Canticum Canticorum expositio. See Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 306–7. 6.20.3, 3:227: Dominici sacramenti. 1.1.6, 1:10–11: A Nino autem vel Abraham usque ad Caesarem Augustum – id est usque ad nativitatem Christi quae fuit anno imperii Caesaris quadragesimo

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68 69

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secundo, cum facta pace cum Parthis Iani portae clausae sunt et bella toto orbe cessarunt – colliguntur anni II XV… 6.20.1, 2:226–7: …ac tunc primum ipse Iani portas sopitis fnitisque omnibus bellis civilibus clausit. 6.17.10, 2:215–16: Itaque oportune conpositis rebus Augusti Caesaris natus est Dominus Christus qui, cum in forma Dei esset, formam servi humiliter adsumpsit… 6.20.6, 2:228: Quo signo quid evidentius quam in diebus Caesaris toto Orbe regnantis futura Christi nativitas declarata est? 6.22.5, 2:235: Igitur eo tempore, id est eo anno quo frmissimam verissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar conposuit, natus est Christus cuius adventui pax ista famulata est, in cuius ortu audientibus hominibus exultantes angeli cecinerunt… 6.22.6, 2:236: …quando et Deus homo videri et esse dignatus est. Tunc igitur natus est Christus… 6.20.3, 2:275: ‘Furthermore, there is no believer, or even one who contradicts the faith, who does not know that this is the same day, namely, in the sixth of January, on which we observe the Epiphany…’. 6.20.3, 2:227: Porro autem hunc esse eundem diem, hoc est VIII idus Ianuarias quo nos Epiphania, hoc est apparitionem sive manifestationem Dominici sacramenti, observamus, nemo credentium sive etiam fdei contradicentium nescit. 7.2.14–15, 3:19: …istius ergo Caesaris, posteaquam imperare coepit, emenso propemodum anno quadragensimo secundo natus est Christus, qui Abrahae sub Nino primo rege fuerat repromissus. Natus est autem VIII kalendas Ianuarias, cum primum incrementa omnia anni venientis incipiunt. For a discussion of the temporal synchronization between empires, see Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 47–50. The forty-second year of Augustus’s rule is designated as the year of Christ’s birth in numerous patristic sources, including: Hippolytus, Commentarium in Danielem (4.9, 23); Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica (1.5.2); Eusebius, Chronicon; Epiphanius, Panarion (51.22.3); Epiphanius, Ancoratus (60.3); Epiphanius, De mensuris et ponderibus (13). See C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Dating the Passion: The Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientifc Chronology (200-1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 48. 7.2.14, 3:19: quamvis et pater eius Caesar metator imperii potius quam imperator exstiterit. The nativity of Christ is frst mentioned as occurring on 25 December in the Chronograph of 354. See Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The CodexCalendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), and Georges Declercq, ‘Dionysius Exiguus and the Introduction of the Christian Era’, Sacris Erudiri 41 (2002): 225. ‘Christ is all in all’; in this sense time is made anew in Christ. Colossians 3:11. Similarly 1:17. Colossians 1:16. As discussed by Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 13: ‘The repeated rhetorical interjections and elaborations have made scholars doubt if the Historiae really are history at all: its apologetic intention, calling forth polemic and rhetoric, seems to impinge on the value of objectivity that one expects of a historian…such views betray the assumption that a text must be objective and neutral in content and form alike to count as a work of history. In that case, much ancient historiography would disqualify. Having an agenda does not disqualify someone from being a historian: most historians were highly partisan and not a few of their modern colleagues fail to live up to the lofty ideal of objectivity.’

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77 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 19. 78 Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 314–15; 317. Fear, Orosius, 309n303. 79 6.22.5, 2:235: Igitur eo tempore, id est eo anno quo frmissimam verissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar conposuit, natus est Christus… 80 Syme, ‘Problems about Janus’, 201. 81 See 6.20.4, 2:227 for Orosius’s rhetorical refusal to engage with the issue. See above, n. 21. 82 Isidore, Etymologiae 6.18.6, trans. by S. A. Barney et al.: Epiphania Graece, Latine apparitio [sive manifestatio] vocatur. Eo enim die Christus sideris indicio Magis apparuit adorandus. 83 This is confrmed in Isidore’s De ecclesiasticis offciis 27.1–3. 84 Isidore, Etymologiae 6.18.6: Duae sunt autem epiphaniae… 85 Susan Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 366. See also Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 320; Fear, Orosius, 309n303. 86 6.20.5, 2:227–8: …quasi eum unum ac potissimum in hoc mundo solumque clarissimum in orbe monstraret, cuius tempore venturus esset, qui ipsum solem solus mundumque totum et fecisset et regeret. 87 6.20.8, 2:229: …quam hunc occulto quidem gestorum ordine ad obsequium praeparationis eius praedestinatum fuisse… Proofs: Nam cum primum (6.20.5, 2:227); deinde cum secundo (6.20.6, 2:228); tertio autem (6.20.8, 2:229). 88 Velleius Paterculus 2.59; Julius Obsequens 68; Suetonius, Augustus 95. Orosius’s phrasing echoes Suetonius. 89 6.20.6, 2:228: in diebus ipsis fons olei largissimus, sicut superius expressi, de taberna meritoria per totum diem fuxit. 90 See Carlo Cecchelli, Santa Maria in Trastevere (Rome: Danesi, 1933), 7–10, for the sources of this tradition. The miracle is referred to again in Book 7 (7.39.11, 3:115–16). Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, A Abr. 1976. The terminology Orosius uses closely follows the Chronicon. The miracle can be interpreted as a foil to the myth associated with the temple of Janus, when a great force of hot water originating from the temple repelled the Sabine enemy under Titus Tatius, establishing the custom of opening the doors of the temple in a time of war. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.9.17–18; Servius, ad Aeneid 8.361. Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, 233. 91 6.20.6, 2:228: Quo signo quid evidentius quam in diebus Caesaris toto Orbe regnantis futura Christi nativitas declarata est? See Cassius Dio 48.43.4. 92 6.20.6, 2:228: Christus enim lingua gentis eius, in qua et ex qua natus est, unctus interpretatur. 93 See Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Earth Is Our Book’: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 73. 94 6.20.7, 2:228–9: …sub principatu Caesaris Romanoque imperio per totum diem, hoc est per omne Romani tempus imperii, – Christum et ex eo Christianos, id est unctum atque ex eo unctos, – de meritoria taberna, hoc est de hospita largaque Ecclesia…signa in caelo et in terra prodigia prodiderunt. 95 6.22.5–7, 2:235–6: Igitur eo tempore, id est eo anno quo frmissimam verissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar conposuit, natus est Christus…Eodem quoque anno tunc primum idem Caesar quem his tantis mysteriis praedestinaverat Deus censum agi singularum ubique provinciarum et censeri omnes homines iussit, quando et Deus homo videri et esse dignatus est. Tunc igitur natus est Christus, Romano censui statim adscriptus ut natus est. Haec et prima illa clarissimaque professio quae Caesarem omnium principem Romanosque rerum dominos singillatim cunctorum hominum edita adscriptione signavit, in qua se et ipse qui cunctos homines fecit inveniri hominem adscribique inter homines voluit…

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Echoing Peterson, Theological Tractates, 102: ‘he [Orosius] clearly Christianized Augustus, and Christ, in becoming a Roman citizen, has been Romanized. The political meaning of this construction is patent.’ Orosius’s interpretation of the census contrasts with Hippolytus’s in his Commentary on Daniel (4.9): ‘And therefore the frst census also occurred under Augustus, when the Lord was born in Bethlehem, so that the men of this world were enrolled and were named “Romans”, whereas those who believe in the heavenly king were named Christians, and bear the sign of the victory over death on their brows.’ Fear interprets Orosius’s designation of Christ as a Roman citizen as showing how ‘Orosius has developed not the pessimistic thinking of his contemporaries, but rather the optimism of a previous generation of Christian writers, and sees the empire is almost the instantiation of heaven upon earth.’ Fear, Orosius, 21. Luke 2:1. The context in which Pocock discusses the birth of Christ and Augustus’s decree is Virgilian. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 69. For an analysis of the Orosian exegesis of Luke and the reception of Orosius’s political theology principally in the thirteenth century, see Tiziana Faitini, ‘“Exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis” (Luke 2:1–2): Debating Imperial Authority in Late Medieval Legal and Political Thought (12th–14th Centuries)’, in Ideas and Institutions from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. by Edward Cavanagh (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 252–79. Matthew 2:1–13. 6.22.5, 2:235: Igitur eo tempore, id est eo anno quo frmissimam verissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar conposuit, natus est Christus cuius adventui pax ista famulata est, in cuius ortu audientibus hominibus exultantes angeli cecinerunt ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis’. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 7.7. The same notion is not found in the writings of Eusebius, which have in certain instances provided a link between the material in Tertullian and Orosius, like the proposal by the emperor Tiberius to deify Jesus Christ as a pagan deity. 6.22.7–8, 2:236: quod penitus numquam ab Orbe condito atque ab exordio generis humani in hunc modum, ne Babylonio quidem, vel Macedonico, ut non dicam minori cuiquam regno, concessum fuit. Nec dubium quoniam omnium cognitioni fdei inspectionique pateat quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus hanc urbem nutu suo auctam defensamque in hunc rerum apicem provexerit, cuius potissime voluit esse cum venit, dicendus utique civis Romanus census professione Romani. Mehl, Roman Historiography, 234. Although a commonplace statement, the Roman empire as a ‘tool’ or ‘instrument’ of God is accurate in this context. For example, Fear, Orosius, 17: ‘It is therefore God’s design to unite all peoples together under one empire to enable Christianity to spread more rapidly, and his chosen instrument for doing this is the Roman Empire.’ Similarly, Wessel, Leo the Great, 366: ‘Orosius saw in this well-timed alliance the providence of God declaring war upon the pagan deities and making the world an appropriate vehicle for the spread of Christianity.’ Fear, Orosius, 309n303. Mommsen, ‘Aponius and Orosius’, 320. Inglebert, Les Romains chrétiens, 572. This is explicitly countered by Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 190n23. This is demonstrated by Arnaud-Lindet and her identifcation of the sources Orosius used. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, 1:Appendix 4, 267–99. By comparison, the near-contemporary Chronica of Sulpicius Severus is largely occupied with reconstructing biblical events from the Old Testament into a form of Christian history, as the Prologue to the work makes clear: ‘I address

104 The emperor and the divine myself to give a condensed account of those things which are set forth in the sacred Scriptures from the beginning of the world and to tell of them, with distinction of dates and according to their importance, down to a period within our own remembrance.’ Sulpicius Severus, Historia sacra, 1.1: Res a mundi exordio sacris litteris editas breviter constringere et cum distinctione temporum usque ad nostram memoriam carpitam dicere aggressus sum. G. K. Van Andel sees the Historia sacra as partly an epitome of the Old Testament, and suggests that the Old Testament interested Severus more than any other work. G. K. Van Andel, The Christian Concept of History in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1976), 7; 12. See also Garry Trompf on Sulpicius Severus’s Chronica: ‘As his [Severus’s] work is two-thirds an epitome of the Biblical record of the past…with his account of Church affairs then running up to his own time, the Chronica’s narrative is very much conditioned by the mounting concern in Old Testament histories with the consequences of wickedness.’ Garry W. Trompf, ‘Consolations of History under the Declining Western Empire: Sulpicius and Orosius’, in Early Christian Historiography: Narratives of Retributive Justice (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), 284. 109 See H. C. Coffn, ‘Vergil and Orosius’, Classical Journal 31 (1935): 235–41.

4

Apologetics and the providence of war

Introduction So much of ancient historiography centres explicitly or implicitly on war.1 The histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius are preoccupied with confict and the fate of empire in their narratives. Herodotus traces the confict between Persia and Greece; Thucydides records the war between Athens and Sparta, believing it to be ‘a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past’; and the same ideology underlies Polybius’s Histories.2 Virgil’s Aeneid famously begins with the song of arms and a man (arma virumque cano), and the ‘civilizing mission’ of the aggressive imposition of Roman imperial hegemony is given as an instruction: ‘Roman, remember by your strength to rule  / Earth’s peoples – for your arts are to be these: / To pacify, to impose the rule of law, / To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.’3 In his Ab urbe condita Livy forever associates the hegemony of empire with Rome’s unparalleled success in warfare: Go...tell the Romans that it is the will of heaven that my Rome should be the head of all the world. Let them henceforth cultivate the arts of war, and let them know assuredly, and hand down the knowledge to posterity, that no human might can withstand Roman arms.4 Despite claiming to provide a more comprehensive account of events over time, in reality, Livy’s narrative is dominated by war, and the rise of Rome is presented as a seemingly endless catalogue of wars, triumphs, and conquests.5 Livy’s work offers a particularly striking example of the assumption that Rome’s military superiority was absolute; peoples and kingdoms could be controlled and organized to suit Roman interest, and Rome could continue conquering when and where it desired.6 The Historiae functions as a critique of this viewpoint. Indeed, the text has been described as an epitome of Livy, and Livy was certainly a principal source for Orosius.7 John Matthews insightfully observed that the Historiae

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599120-5

106 Apologetics and the providence of war was a response to the sack of Rome in the early ffth century as much as it was a reaction against what he terms the ‘Heroic Age of Rome’: At the same moment, therefore, that the Flaviani were, in the years after the Fall of Rome, safeguarding...the books of Livy which celebrated the early growth of the Eternal City, Orosius offered a history which was largely devoted systematically and sourly to denying the entire value of this ancient history, the Heroic Age of Rome.8 Momigliano similarly recognized that Orosius opposed the pagan contemporary idealization of the past, writing not against the readers of the Historia Augusta or of Ammianus, but the readers of Livy.9 As Deen Schildgen argues, Orosius appropriates Livy’s concept of Rome as the world, without attributing Roman imperial hegemony to their divine descendancy from Mars, the god of war.10 Orosius wrote ‘contra livianos’, pushing against established historiographical patterns to develop an anti-war and anti-imperialist apologetic, at least until the coming of Christ and rule of Augustus.11 Theresa Urbainczyk has observed that ‘[a]s classical history could be said to go from war to war, so church history has a tendency to go from church council to church council’.12 But while Orosius has been described as a Church historian, he does not focus on ecclesiastical councils at the expense of a classical approach to the past, but retains his focus frmly on war.13 The Historiae is a history of war. Orosius explicitly formulates his narrative around warfare, which is positioned as punishment for manifest or hidden sin (1.1.2–15, 1:10–12). As the Prologue makes clear, Augustine had instructed Orosius to explicate the burdens of war, disease, famine, criminal acts, and natural disasters, and unfold them systematically in the Historiae.14 The motif of war functions as the prime cause of misery the world suffers, represented as a collective as well as an individual sin, and the one for which humankind is most directly responsible.15 As Brenda Deen Schildgen has argued, Orosius’s historical theory centres on human suffering which is the consequence of sin, ‘the reason and cause for the nightmare that is human history’.16 Seven centuries later, Otto of Freising similarly wrote ‘in a bitterness of mind’ (ex amaritudine animi), centring his Chronica around the absence of redemption and weaving the miseries of the past rather than focusing on the sequence of events.17 Orosius presents a revisionist version of history in the apologetic comparison of the past with the present, where pre-Christian times were blighted by the affiction of warfare, revealing the slaughter, violence, and enslavement of war. Orosius developed a historiographical approach in opposition to earlier writers of history who wrote with a different purpose: ‘for whereas they unfold wars, we unfold the miseries of wars’ (3 Preface 1, 1:77).18 Where war had been central to a glorifed version of the past, Orosius’s historiographical approach invests in an ideology of condemnation that emphasizes the negative outcomes both for conquerors and conquered alike. Orosius’s critique of war and empire was

Apologetics and the providence of war 107 part of a proto-postcolonial discourse, but this was swiftly curtailed with the interweaving of Christianity with imperial authority in the Roman empire. Reconciling the vicissitudes of empire had to be prioritized in order to create a universal and peaceful Christian commonwealth. Orosius took the Roman state ideology of conquest and victory, and the Republican and imperial notion of war as triumphant and glorious, and reversed it to demonstrate war as bad and bloody.19 The innovation in Orosius’s approach is highlighted by Shaw’s observation that to understand war in late antiquity only from a Roman perspective is a historiographic tradition; so the battle of Adrianople is a catastrophe, and the sack of Rome in 410 is a political disaster.20 Fear recognizes that Orosius’s emphasis on the suffering of war is in striking contrast to the mainstream of Roman historiography, and Torres Rodríguez characterizes it as a ‘genuine revolution’ in the writing of history.21 For Torres Rodríguez, the Historiae is pressingly relevant in the information it reveals that has been elided by classical writers, and which modern historiography is eagerly awaiting.22 J. G. A. Pocock similarly recognizes Orosius’s innovative approach, that the Historiae achieves more than merely heaping up disasters in a crude scoresheet between past and present. Orosius is exceptional in his systematic rejection of the narrative of Republican and imperial virtue, and therefore of the principles on which all Roman and nearly all classical histories had been written.23 Momigliano, however, does not recognize Orosius’s innovative approach to war: he instead understands that Augustine’s theology of peace did not effect any type of new historical study of the causes of war in the ffth century, as Orosius’s Historiae shows.24 Momigliano’s interpretation that Orosius did not develop a new Christian pacifsm out of Augustinian theology perceives Orosius’s complicity with traditional historiographical approaches to warfare. Momigliano recognizes Orosius’s emphasis on original sin, which made war appear more inevitable and natural.25 Contrastingly, Goffart sees that a new Christian historiography did develop a new approach: the Roman empire might be divinely ordained, but the long and bloodstained history of the empire was not a source of pride for Roman Christians. While Christian authors could appreciate the pax Romana, Orosius’s and Augustine’s accounts of Roman imperialism subverted Roman heroism, knocking the triumphs of the past off their pedestals.26 Although the bemoaning of warfare, especially military disaster, was not new in antiquity, the comprehensive and sustained hostility towards war encapsulated in the Historiae was unique to Orosius. This innovation, once aligned with Christianity, would be enormously infuential. Orosius challenges the intuitive perception of the present found among his readership, that it was witness to unmitigated disasters, confict, and upheaval on an unprecedented scale. He argues that the further away from the advent of Christianity, the ‘solace of true religion’ (Prologue 15, 1:9), the worse times are, and from the point of the Incarnation the times are set on a course of constant improvement.27 As Peter Van Nuffelen has observed,

108 Apologetics and the providence of war the Historiae is ‘at once a narrative of the past and an argument on how to interpret that past...neither can be separated’.28 Orosius’s approach necessitates the employment of binary opposites, juxtaposing the past with the present, with the present as infnitely better than the past. A strong division is constructed between previous times, which are miserable, and the tempora Christiana, demarcated by the Incarnation of Christ, which are blessed and miraculous (4.6.35, 2:26). This is Orosius’s apologetic argument, which was designed to counter contemporary pagan claims that the Gothic sack of Rome in 410 CE was caused by Christianity and the neglect of the pagan gods. Orosius contrasts the suffering of the pre-Incarnation past with the present, which is more favourable and ever improving, largely through the motif of war. Susan Wessel emphasizes that it is not the geopolitical consequences of war, but rather the misery of human suffering caused by war that Orosius’s apologetic centres on.29 In the early books of the Historiae, before Christianity, Orosius is categorical in his representation of a now distant past: they were miserable because of war and the universal impact of confict.30 In later books, the equation becomes more complex as the continued existence of war and the expansion of empire based on war has to be negotiated.

Subverting the glorifed past Rather than using war as a vehicle of history, Orosius takes up again the story of the conficts of past ages, relating the misery of the past caused by war rather than only the narrative of history through war, and distinguishing the Historiae from traditional historiographical approaches in so doing (3 Preface 1, 1:77).31 Orosius contests the idealized image of the Graeco-Roman past specifcally through literature and education, directing the challenge towards pagan writers who manipulated history into a version of the past that glorifed warfare, violence, and empire-building. Deen Schildgen argues that, like Livy, Orosius fnds moral purpose in the past, exploiting the potential for moral instruction in history.32 He targets those texts and authors that would have had the most cultural currency within his readership, having been studied as part of an ancient education.33 As Richard Flower has observed, if Christian authors explicitly challenged some ideas and stories from ‘pagan’ paideia, they did so from within a shared late antique culture where its value was widely recognized, rather than as inhabitants of a hermetically sealed Christian community that did not engage with the traditions of education in the rest of the Roman world.34 Orosius holds pagan writers directly responsible for falsifying the past, or at least not telling the whole story. The Historiae has not traditionally been valued as an educational text, but the forceful polemical nature of the work was designed to infuence the religious identity of its audience, and the text assumed a pedagogical importance in later centuries.35

Apologetics and the providence of war 109 In composing the Historiae, Orosius followed a moral imperative to reveal the true reality of the past as miserable and the present as much improved, exposing the deceit in the glorifcation of war by earlier pagan authors. Deen Schildgen understands the function of the Historiae in educational and moralistic terms, that Orosius reads Scripture and other authorities literally, ‘making history a source of lessons, for, he argues, it provides education about what causes human misery’.36 Orosius uses his learning to subvert what he perceives as the morally dubious ideology that underpinned the educational and cultural system of the Roman empire. Following the Incarnation and through the intervention of divine providence, the political entity of empire is sanctifed and history is Christianized, enabling the promotion of a model of Christian identity frmly within the traditions of a classical past, but in a version not recognizable as conventional classical history. The Orosian philosophy towards the misrepresentation of the past is most starkly demonstrated by the overtly negative redaction of Homer’s Iliad in Book 1: However, four hundred and thirty years before the founding of the City, there took place the rape of Helen, the conspiracy of the Greeks, and the assembling of a thousand ships, then the ten years’ siege, and fnally the famous destruction of Troy. The pre-eminent poet Homer has made clear in his brilliant poem the nations and peoples this storm swept up and destroyed in that most bloody of wars, lasting ten years. It is not our task now to set out these events in order, as this is a long task and the story is commonly known. But those who have learnt of the length of that siege, and the massacre, atrocities, and enslavement that occurred with the fall of Troy, should see if they are justifed in their anger at the present times. (1.17.1–3, 1:37–8)37 The destruction of Troy is approached chronologically as another historical detail, facilitating the more critical representation of events rather than perpetuating the traditional understanding of the Iliad embodying ideals of glory and fame achieved through martial violence. The glorious or brilliant song (luculentissimo carmine) of Homer is instead described as a cruel war that lasted for ten years before Troy was fnally destroyed. Orosius considers the nations involved and the number of peoples ‘this storm swept up and destroyed’ (quas nationes quantosque populos idem turbo involverit atque adfixerit). Once the reader has realized the Orosian perspective on the epic, which emphasizes the horror of the length of the siege and the atrocious slaughter it entailed, they should consider the condition of the present times and understand which is worse. This is a motivated reading: Orosius’s diatribe against the texts of antiquity seeks to disprove pagan accusations against Christianity following the sack of Rome, that the present is much worse than the past, and that the Christian religion is to blame.

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Orosius treats Virgil’s account of Aeneas’s arrival in Italy similarly, not as a foundation myth for the glorious beginnings of the Roman empire, but as a further example of how past events have been distorted by their retelling in pagan texts. Aeneas is represented not as a celebrated hero but as a fugitive, an exile from Troy, who brought confict, war, and death to Italy (1.18.1, 1:68). Matthew Kempshall has observed that Orosius exploits Virgil’s Aeneid as an opportunity for an extended meditation on the importance of the passing of time for an understanding of the signifcance of the present.38 The choice of authors and texts as a target for criticism is explained by their familiarity to Orosius’s reader: Virgil’s narrative is burned (inustum est, 1.18.1, 1:68) into the mind, and Homer’s epic ‘seems known to all’ (omnibus notum videtur, 1.17.2, 1:67). It has been argued that by the beginning of the second century CE, the system of formal education in the Mediterranean world was fxed within fairly well-defned limits, and the authors that were to be studied had hardened into a standardized list, topped by Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin.39 Quintilian confrms that Homer and Virgil were essential reading for a student in the ancient world.40 Augustine discusses his literary training in Greek and Latin through the texts of Virgil and Homer, as does Paulinus of Pella, who was born around 375 CE.41 Van Nuffelen understands that Virgil ‘was the shared cultural baggage of the educated elite of his [Orosius’s] age and would remain the bedrock of education for a long time in the Christian West’.42 Orosius expected his readers’ education to facilitate their participation in his intertextual deconstruction. The Historiae builds on a shared assumption of cultural familiarity, aimed not at glorifying Orosius’s text but at persuading the reader to follow his superior understanding of the past, which invested a moral quality in familiar narratives. Orosius understands that these narratives become familiar and develop a warped moral value in an educational context: ‘all these have been imprinted in our minds by the instruction of the elementary school’ (1.18.1, 1:68).43 He blames schooling in the ludus litterarius for blinding the reader to the truth of history, of the inescapable horror and violence caused by Roman expansionism and hegemony.44 Throughout the work, Orosius re-evaluates the pagan perception of the past, juxtaposing his overwhelming sense of horror at misfortune, slaughter, and death with the frivolous fction of fabulae: Behold, how many actions involving so many provinces, peoples, and cities I have set forth...how I have involved masses of misfortunes. For who will unfold the slaughter of that time, who the deaths in words, or who can equal the grief with tears? Yet these very misfortunes, because they have grown dim by the passing of many centuries, have become exercises for our talents and delightful topics for stories. (2.18.4–5)45 Orosius argues that the pagan comprehension of history is fawed; the ‘masses of misfortunes’ are not understood according to their true emotional value

Apologetics and the providence of war 111 but have instead ‘grown dim by the passing of many centuries’, assuming a warped moral sense. Instead of causing shock and distress, the slaughters of the past provide exercitia ingeniorum (‘exercises for our talents’), presumably within an educational context, and oblectamenta fabularum (‘delightful topics for stories’). The Orosian polemic argues against the pagan division of history into fabulae or exempla, moralizing tales or illustrative stories. Instead, the misery and horror of the past should provoke tears, shuddering, and grief, as dramatically demonstrated by the narrator.46 Orosius appeals to the reader through logic and reason, exhorting them to pay close attention to confict and its causes, and to compare the conditions of the past and the present as if from a watchtower (2.18.5–6, 1:124). Orosius can with ease expect the reader to conclude that the troubles and confusion of the pre-Christian past were caused by the anger and hostility of God (irato atque aversato), and that the composition of the present is due to God’s kindness and mercy (propitio et miserante, 2.18.5, 1:124). Orosius encourages the reader to revalue the past in an ethical sense, reconfguring the meaning of history. The appropriate emotional reaction of grief and tears is exemplifed by the narrative voice, and his outline of the disorder of the past and harmony of the present leads the reader to conclude that the state of both ages is preordained by divine providence.47 Orosius persistently denigrates pagan educational texts like Homer and Virgil, demonstrating to his reader the distorted version of the past they present. This is part of a wider campaign against pagan authors, by which gentiles historici (1.3.6, 1:43) are shown to be blind and false, and the knowledge they propagate to be based on lies (5.3.4, 2:88). Yet while earlier pagan writers are deceitful and the Historiae is a text to be trusted, Orosius exploits pagan writing, particularly Virgil, through frequent allusion. Virgil appears in the emotive narrative of the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BCE, bolstering Orosius’s account with imagery to evoke the horror of the invasion (2.19.10–12, 1:126). Orosius quotes directly from the Aeneid in Book 6, describing Virgil simply as poeta (‘the poet’), in refutation of pagan complaints that the prohibition of holy rites, ceremonies, and divination prevents the prediction of future catastrophes (6.15.13, 2:207). Orosius bolsters his polemic with reference to the very literature he is disputing. His habit of allusion reveals the assumption that his reader is capable of understanding these intertextual references, with little reliance on available Christian models such as Scripture or Augustine’s De civitate Dei, despite the signposting to De civitate Dei at the opening of the Historiae.48 Orosius mentions in the Prologue that the rays of the frst ten books of Augustine’s great work have risen high and shone over the whole world, and yet Orosius chooses not to use the text to endorse his argument.49 Instead, he contests the attacks of pagans on Christianity with their own weapons, peppering his Christian history with a diversity of pagan writing, relying almost exclusively on the argument of interference by divine providence to make pagan history Christian.

112 Apologetics and the providence of war Orosius holds a mirror to the ‘sweet stories’ and ‘fortunate deeds of brave men’, subverting the traditional glorious version of the past and revealing its true nature to his audience and opponents (3.14.8–10, 1:161).50

The numbered dead: warfare and statistics One of Orosius’s methods for undermining the glorifcation of war is literally to count the dead. In the confict, for example, between the Carthaginians and the Romans in Book 4, Orosius records that 30,000 Roman soldiers were killed, Regulus, ‘the renowned leader’, was captured with 500 men, and in the tenth year of the Punic war the Carthaginians celebrated a ‘renowned triumph’. Three hundred ships were mobilized in response by the Romans and then the Carthaginians, with 104 Carthaginian ships sunk, 30 captured, and 35,000 troops killed. Rome’s casualties were 9 ships sunk and 1,100 men killed. Battle was subsequently fought, and the Carthaginians lost 9,000 soldiers. Rome’s feet was then shipwrecked on its return, with 220 lost out of 300 and the remaining 80 surviving after losing their cargo (4.9.3–9, 2:33–4). Lists of statistics are scattered throughout the text, conveying an impression of precision and factuality that makes the narrative appear truthful, and diffcult to challenge. Statistics are used not only to make the Historiae appear more trustworthy but also to discredit pagan historians as fallacious.51 Orosius attacks the suppression of the true statistics of war that serves to misrepresent war as honourable.52 The suppression of statistics is attributed to the contrasting methodologies of other writers. Orosius positions himself as a writer ‘at the end of times’ frustrated by his inability to access the full extent of the past’s calamities, obstructed by authors who wrote only in praise of the Romans, and who wanted to instruct rather than terrify their readers with examples from the past (4.5.10–13, 2:19–20). The pagan construction of history is defcient, as it is conditioned to acclaim Roman victories. It is through the ‘shamelessness of lying’ (impudentia mentiendi) that the number of the dead among the enemy is increased while the number of dead on the winning (invariably Roman) side is reduced or suppressed altogether (4.20.7–10, 2:62–3). Orosius’s approach is quite the opposite; he aims to shock his reader with a past reality of war that involves huge numbers of injured and dead. Using the rhetorical device of subiectio, posing a question and providing an answer, to strengthen his point, Orosius reveals his historical methodology in relaying past events, emphasizing the importance of statistics, while simultaneously criticizing previous writers for not completing their task properly: Who, I ask, will unfold in words the one war of these two cities which was waged for twenty-three years; how many kings of the Carthaginians; how many consuls of the Romans; how many army battle lines; how great a number of ships it brought together, dispersed, and crushed? (4.11.4, 2:143)53

Apologetics and the providence of war 113 The inadequacies of past writers are juxtaposed with Orosius as a more truthful and accurate historian who offers a complete narrative replete with statistical evidence. In the corresponding treatment of the Punic wars in De civitate Dei, Augustine uses subiectio not to imply that he will provide the missing statistics, but that the numbers are so great they are incalculable.54 It is impossible to count how many smaller kingdoms were destroyed, how many cities demolished, how many men on either side killed, in the course of the Carthaginian wars. Augustine concludes that if he were to recall and relate all of these calamities, he should ‘turn into just another chronicler’.55 He is disparaging of the task of constructing a historical narrative without the philosophy behind it, while Orosius can be ‘just another chronicler’ in willingly furnishing his account with statistics, but also investing heavily in the rhetorical argument that gives purpose to his work. The signifcance of a comprehensive account of history for Orosius is clear: it is only once all the facts of the past are known that judgement can be passed on the present.56 In relaying historical events accompanied by statistics, Orosius argues that the disasters of war in the past were much greater than in current times. He is not simply depicting the past; he is highlighting its terrible nature in order to persuade his audience that they have misinterpreted the past, and that pagan writers of history are responsible.

Postcolonialism and the Historiae Orosius’s historical revisionism, however, extends beyond the denigration of pagan authors. The Historiae offers anti-colonial historical revisionism that centres those implicated in history but not represented by it, challenging the homogeneous perspective of the surviving works of ancient authors and the imperialist and nationalist paradigms they reinscribe. To conceptualize the Historiae as a postcolonial text is uncommon but not unprecedented.57 This interpretation of the text requires greater historical retrospection than is typical, as postcolonial and critical race theories are more generally applied to historical periods where modern rather than ancient European powers are the colonizers; classics and ancient history remain undertheorized disciplines. With the exception of the feld of classical reception, modern criticism has been slow in the application of postcolonial theory to the ancient world. David Mattingly observes the uncritical reception of Roman imperial authority within Roman history and archaeology, where the ‘sinister side of power’, the subjugation of conquered peoples, is habitually ignored.58 More recently, classics and ancient world studies have turned increasing attention towards colonialism, race, imperialism, and marginalized identities as part of anti-racist discourses and challenges to white supremacist appropriations of classical culture.59 To see Orosius as a burgeoning postcolonial writer does not imply that there was an achieved state beyond colonialism in the early ffth century CE. The ‘post’ is not necessarily a temporal marker, and does not necessarily

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entail the departure of the imperial power.60 The Historiae engages postcolonial thinking in the codifcation of empire through resistance, uneven power relations, violence, and identity erasure, concepts exemplifed in what we would now consider seminal postcolonial texts. The proto-postcolonialism developed in the Historiae centres on the emphasis Orosius gives to the process of imperialism from the moment of colonization onwards, and to its non-consensual nature.61 Orosius’s perspective on the past focuses on the evils of empire and the cost of hegemony for conquered nations, which is achieved through war. The military victories of Rome, rather than being celebrated, are condemned as the consequences for the victims are given precedence: ‘See, then, how happily Rome conquers, to the extent that whatever is outside Rome is unhappily conquered’ (5.1.3, 2:173).62 The ideology that understands triumphs, victories, the acquisition of booty, and subjugation of other peoples in positive terms is challenged in an alternative representation of the past. Orosius’s approach constitutes an important shift in the historiography of empire, as recognized by Pocock in his description of the text as ‘postantique’: Orosius is a ferce critic of what we should term imperialism; the values of his criticism are not the same as ours, but he shares with contemporary postcolonial writers a determination to tell the story of empire from the bottom up. This lends his writing an air curiously postmodern, perhaps we should say postantique; it is as if we were reading the subaltern studies of the ancient world.63 Powerful contemporary accounts of the destructive consequences of empire are rare; in the expansion and control of territory, it was seldom recognized that Rome had been the aggressor.64 It was more common to fnd the representation that wars were fought defensively to suppress enemies who were considered to be a threat, as expressed by Cicero: ‘The only excuse...for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed.’65 Cicero’s rationale of iustum bellum was echoed by the Greek historian Polybius, writing in the second century: For the Romans took extra care not to appear to be the frst to act unjustly, or to attack their neighbours when they undertook their wars, and tried instead to seem to be defending themselves and to be entering their wars under compulsion.866 The concept of iustum bellum supposed that war was defensive in nature and received divine support, enabling Roman claims that they had conquered their empire only by pursuing just causes, specifcally by aiding their allies, in modern terms defned as ‘defensive imperialism’.67 Orosius’s reversed perspective stands starkly apart from the uniform cultural reception of empire.

Apologetics and the providence of war 115 The anti-colonial discourse reaches an intense pitch in Book 5, in anticipation of Book 6 and the rhetorical turn towards the Incarnation and the rule of Augustus, through which Roman imperial authority is Christianized. Book 5 presents the pre-Christian past in a paradigmatic sense, as Orosius intends it to be understood, and according to the most truthful and accurate version of history. As Van Nuffelen has recognized, Orosius claims a unique perspective on the past, one which undermines traditional victorious narratives to show what the past really looked like.68 Where war has been a central part of a glorifed version of the past, Orosius instead takes the opposite view and presents war in its most dire terms in Book 5. Orosius inverts justifcations of defensive imperialism to represent the experience of war literally from the other side, as Tacitus did with his invented speech by the British leader Calgacus following his defeat in the face of overwhelming Roman military force: Pillagers of the world, now they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate devastation, they probe the sea. If their enemy is wealthy, they are greedy; if poor, they are overweening; neither East nor West has sated them... To plunder, slaughter, and rapine they falsely give the name ‘empire’. They make a desolation and they call it ‘peace’. 69 This bitter critique of imperial rule by a Roman writer is exceptional within ancient literature. The sustained attack on war and the hegemony of empire in Book 5 of the Historiae enables alternative perspectives that imagine the effects of Roman subjugation, and that the slaughter that inevitably accompanied military conquest did not receive unanimous approval. The extreme anti-colonial position of the narrative voice in the Historiae necessitates a rapid distancing from any endorsement of Rome’s empire. Orosius revalues Rome’s imperial success, weighing it against so much unhappiness and upheaval, and arguing that the devastation of peoples and empires is too great a price for Rome’s increasing wealth and prosperity (5.1.4, 2:82). He determines to reveal the hidden side of empire through the conjectured evidence of those at the receiving end of Roman imperialism. Following the unhappy destruction of Carthage, the ultimate Roman enemy, that closes the fourth book, the anti-colonial discourse intensifes sharply. Book 5 is preoccupied with the disasters of warfare and dire portents. The past is reviled, and the Roman beneft of war is heavily condemned: So I think that they will say: ‘Has there ever been a happier period than those times in which were continuous triumphs, famous victories, rich booty, celebrated processions, and when great kings and conquered peoples were driven in a long line before the chariot?’ (5.1.2, 2:173)70 Orosius reverses the positive perception of war, that Roman victories have generally been understood as benefcial. With careful scrutiny (diligenter

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adtendant), it is evident that the opposite is true. So many wars, against slaves, allies, citizens, and fugitives, brought no gains but great miseries (5.1.1, 2:82). The narrative voice acknowledges the contested interpretation of early and mid-Republican Roman history, that the traditional pagan understanding of the glorious past was characterized by victory in war, and that here Orosius takes the same times (isdem temporibus) and gives the correct historical perspective on the past (5.1.3, 2:82). One perspective is pitted against another, pagan against Christian, Rome against the world, and the fortune of the conquerors against the misfortune of the conquered. Rather than articulating grievance through an individual as Tacitus does, Orosius instead personifes a conquered people, giving voice to the silenced nations. This begins with Carthage, where the stipulations imposed on the Carthaginians by the Romans made peace scarcely an improvement on the slaughters of war (3.8.2, 1:148). The 120 years refers to the frst and third Punic wars, which culminate in the Roman destruction of Carthage and the apocalyptic, emotive imagery of the burning city which became a funeral pyre for its citizens (5.1.5, 2:83). The narrative voice seeks to express the viewpoint of subjugated peoples: the passive videbatur gives emphasis to Carthage’s view of events; Spain ‘presents her own opinion’ (edat Hispania sententiam suam) (5.1.6, 2:83); and fnally Italy ‘speaks’, ipsa postremo dicat Italia (5.1.7, 2:83). Spain’s experience of suppression under Rome like Carthage ends in an apocalyptic spectacle of internecine strife. For 200 years, Spain’s felds were watered with its own blood and it was unable to repel or endure the belligerent enemy constantly attacking on every border (5.1.6, 2:83). Finally Spain, ‘crushed by the slaughter of wars, exhausted by the famine of sieges, with their wives and children killed’, found a remedy for their miseries: ‘they killed one another by pitiful confict and mutual slaughter’ (5.1.6, 2:175).71 Italy is similarly represented as a nation oppressed by Roman rule, and as resisting for 400 years (5.1.7, 2:83). The invented reactions of Carthage, Spain, and Italy are deliberately emotive to counterbalance the celebration of Rome’s expansionist policy of empire. I do not ask about the innumerable peoples of different nations, long free, then conquered in war, led away from their fatherland, sold for a price, dispersed in slavery, what they, then, preferred for themselves, what they thought about the Romans, and what judgements they made about the times. (5.1.8, 2:174)72 The anti-colonial discourse opposing Rome is extended to innumerable captured nations, long free before being conquered in war, removed from their patria and sold into slavery (5.1.8, 2:83–4). The rhetoric of praeteritio not to speculate or ‘ask’ (non requiro) extends the concept of Roman imperial hegemony into the abstract, magnifying the harm by modelling a universal victim of Roman oppression. Again, Orosius ‘passes over’ (omitto) the wealth, power, and glory of ‘kings’ (regibus) who were captured, loaded

Apologetics and the providence of war 117 with chains as slaves, ‘sent under the yoke, driven before the chariot, [and] slaughtered in prison’ (5.1.9, 2:174).73 Orosius recognizes the futility of such a task in the irreversible silencing of the oppressed and defeated, that those conquered by Rome have all power removed and any physical or articulated opposition to empire is suppressed. It is as foolish to ask the opinion of oppressed peoples as it is diffcult not to bemoan their wretchedness (5.1.9, 2:84). This recognition of historical perspective defnes the Historiae as a proto-postcolonial text when the reception of empire was largely unequivocal triumphalism. The postcolonialism of the Historiae is, however, complicated by Orosius’s apologetic design. In pre-Christian time, the brutality of the imperial system is foregrounded, but following the birth of Christ Orosius has different requirements for this reception. Rome is needed to represent a universal and peaceful Christian commonwealth that enables conversion to Christianity; the discourse of anti-empire is incompatible with the Christian political theology that understands the Roman empire, once Christianized, in providential and salvifc terms. The Christianization of the empire limits its anti-colonial scope; the simultaneous glorifcation and condemnation of empire makes the work partially rather than intrinsically a postcolonial text. This inconsistency is understood as characteristic of ‘early’ postcolonial texts, where the potential for subversion cannot be fully realized.74 A text like the Historiae is created within ‘the constraints of a discourse and the institutional practice of a patronage system’ which limits and undercuts the assertion of a different perspective. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffths, and Helen Tiffn argue that the development of independent literatures depends upon the abrogation of this constraining power and the appropriation of writing for new and distinctive usages.75 Despite the radical nature of Orosius’s rewriting of history, the Historiae is in fact a deeply conservative text, investing heavily in the existing political status quo combined with an ostensibly orthodox version of Christianity, and carefully aligned with contemporary fgures of Christian authority, especially Augustine. His combination of the Christian religion with Roman imperial authority was bold and innovative while simultaneously reinforcing existing power structures and cultural norms that re-entrenched the political basis of empire.

The reconciliation of empire The overarching theme of the Historiae, the comparison between past and present, necessitates that the anti-imperial discourse that gives voice to subjugated peoples is, at some point, reconciled within the text. Once the chaos of the colonial past has been thoroughly established in Book 5, it is then contrasted with the harmony and security of the present. The unrest of war is unknown in contemporary times, the ‘storms of evil’ are replaced with happiness, and the slavery of paying tribute to Rome with the generous

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benefcence of the state (5.1.11–13, 2:84–5). Orosius builds to this point of contrast, stretching his rhetoric to a fevered pitch, reaching back to a dark and barbaric past in order to make his point more forcefully. The world then was thoroughly divided: geographical space was split into provinces; war was universal; political authority was polyarchic; and peoples are divided by their laws and customs: ‘Long ago, when wars raged throughout the whole world, every province enjoyed its own kings, its own laws, and its own customs, and there was no alliance of mutual good feelings where a divergence of powers divided’ (5.1.14, 2:175).76 Fundamentally, it was the divergence of political authority that prevented the possibility of unity or peace (societas adfectionum).77 Orosius builds the polemic through anacoenosis, posing a series of rhetorical questions to facilitate his representation of the chaotic and hostile past (5.1.14–16, 2:85). The ‘unfathered and barbarous tribes’ (solutas et barbaras gentes) are kept apart by their religious practices, extending the imagery of universal confict in the association between political and religious diversity (5.1.14, 2:85). There is no refuge from enemies; everything is strange and everyone a stranger. The social structures which allow friendship and hospitality, particularly shared customs, laws, and religion, are absent from this dangerous and brutal pre-Christian world. Orosius concludes this depiction of the inhospitable past by illustrating his argument with examples from the past, of the Egyptian king Busiris who sacrifced strangers to Zeus, of the Tauri people who sacrifced strangers to Diana, and Polymestor who murdered his guest Polydorus to take his treasure (5.1.16, 2:85). Orosius moves the narrative from these literary and mythical examples of the past to the Christian turn in time, where the narrative becomes much more active, switching to the frst person, and rejoining strongly and emotively with the image of a universal Christian empire: ‘But for me, when I fee at the frst disturbance of whatever commotion, since it is a question of a secure place of refuge, everywhere there is a native land, everywhere my law and my religion’ (5.2.1, 2:176).78 This universalizing discourse is intended as the antithesis of the religious and political diversity of the past. Now, confict has ended, and there is no longer war between peoples. Orosius presents a sweeping reality of the Romano-Christian commonwealth, extending across the compass points of north, south, and east, with the west implied by the ‘great islands’, Britain and Ireland (magnarum insularum, 5.2.3, 2:86).79 The construction of a Roman Christian identity is universalized: there is no need to fear hostility from non-Christian divinities or worshippers, as the one God is loved and feared everywhere (5.2.5, 2:86). Among Romans, Orosius is a Roman; among Christians, he is a Christian; among men, he is a man (5.2.6, 2:87).80 The patria is no longer geographically local or specifc, because of Christianity. By the early ffth century, Orosius can emphasize the legal, and therefore legitimate, aspect of Christianity in the further expansion of the religion into the state and interconnection with political authority.

Apologetics and the providence of war 119 Orosius (or his narrative construct) argues that this is exemplifed by his free reception by Africa, to her peace, ancestry, and law (5.2.2, 2:86). It is possible that in his vision of Roman ecumenicalism, Orosius is refecting on his own personal experiences in his fight from an inhospitable and dangerous homeland to the sanctity of Augustine and Africa, where he appears to have been well received. His trans-Mediterranean travels could have secured his impression that Christianity really did provide a safe haven that transcended the borders of nation and country.81 Yet, Orosius’s attempt to simplify the complexities of his own time with an all-encompassing Christian identity has been received with critical scepticism: ‘it is a rosy view; a view which does not square well with the picture of contemporary Roman society which emerges from our other sources and one which could scarcely survive very much longer’.82 Paschoud further describes his vision as ‘une pernicieuse illusion, ou plutôt un mélancolique regret’.83 The image that Orosius presents is propaganda, a panegyric for the Christian empire in an overestimation of the peace, strength, and universality of the Church. The reversal of empire that foregrounded the peripheral, provincial voice has been replaced by a pro-imperial attitude and the return of the centre in a universal Christian Roman empire. Polytheism has been eradicated by monotheism, and universal confict between nations has been eliminated by the establishment of one nation. The Christian nation encompasses the entire world, allowing peace and harmony to fourish. This strong blend of monotheism, identity, and nation through empire is evident in the Historiae in a broad and idealized sense as well as reduced to the individual. With the change to the frst person in Book 5 comes an exposition of identity in a style of challenge and rebuttal, suggested by the repeated ‘I’, culminating in the strident but succinct statement of identity: ‘Among Romans…I am a Roman; among Christians, a Christian; among men, a man’ (5.2.6, 2:177).84 The identity and allegiance of the narrative voice has shifted, and the anticolonial apologetic discourse is now a thing of the past. There is no place for ethnic or regional identity. Instead, identity is forged by religion and citizenship.85 Orosius’s ideology of identity is defned spatially, religiously, and legally within the Christian Roman empire, where geographical distance is neutralized by a universal Christian community and a cohesive monotheism. The advent of Christianity transfgures human history, bringing providential peace and harmony to a seldom grateful people. Orosius invests heavily in the concept of peace in order to emphasize the joint signifcance of the birth of Christ and the accession of Augustus, and initiate a new epoch defned by the existence of Christianity. The abolition of confict and the notion of a universal and everlasting peace is a strong apologetical statement, but it does not sustain scrutiny beyond a superfcial level. It exists not intrinsically but only within the changing concept and continued existence of warfare. The obstacle of the sack of Rome, a major event in the Historiae, disrupts the course of peace, necessitating the acknowledgement of the

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persistence of confict. Orosius contextualizes the sack within a hierarchy of warfare, avoiding the representation of the Gothic invasion as exceptional, and enabling a positive comparison when contrasted with other military disasters. The perpetuation of warfare in Book 7 is explained by Orosius’s historiographical approach, which necessitates that further instances of war after the birth of Christ are not elided, in preference for a more complete historical narrative in accord with the preceding six books. Orosius eschews an idealized and partial account of history from Christ’s birth, maintaining the coherence of the text in one sense but risking contradiction in another, in the simultaneous and competing narratives of war and peace.

Conclusion The Historiae is a text in which war is central. It is the motif through which the narrative of the past is told. The misery of pre-Christian history is exemplifed through the presentation of war as an affiction on humanity. Orosius’s sense of grief at the suffering of the past challenges the twisted morality of the pagan perception of history, and sees the misfortune, slaughter, and death in the triumph of victory. The reader is exhorted similarly to reassess the past in a moral sense, comparing the past with the present age. The reader is predestined to fnd disorder in the past and harmony in the present, with all of time ordained by the divine providence of God. War is an intrinsic part and a necessary requisite of the political structure of empire. Rome was no exception, and the subversion of the pagan interpretation of the past necessitates that empire, the product of war, is reviled and condemned. But the multiple identities of Orosius, as an admiring Roman citizen, a provincial who has witnessed the reality of Roman conquest, and a Christian polemicist, jostle sometimes uncomfortably for position throughout the text.86 Each element has moments of prominence, and the differing allegiances to individual narratives cause contradiction. It is arguable that the tripartite identity is never fully reconciled, but it is also true that Orosius’s strongest affliation was to Christianity, and the imperative to resolve political authority and events on earth with the divine ordinance of God. This is achieved in the sanctifcation of empire through the birth of Christ. Orosius initially resists, but is ultimately invested in, empire. Divine providence directs the abolition of polytheism and polyarchy, and the fnal Roman Christian empire assumes universal authority, where war no longer exists, Roman law is obeyed, and only the Christian God is worshipped. Orosius’s fervent reaction against war, and his anti-colonial stance and pacifsm are, in the end, strategies in arguing against pagan historiography.

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Notes 1 Recognized by D. S. Levene, Livy on the Hannibalic War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 261, and Brent D. Shaw, ‘War and Violence’, in Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World, ed. by G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 130. 2 Herodotus (1.1) explicitly states his authorial motivation, to show how the Greeks and the Persians came into confict. Thucydides (1.1) wrote his history of the war between Athens and Sparta believing that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any other past confict. Polybius (1.1) wrote in order to ascertain how the Romans had succeeded in conquering almost the whole of the inhabited world. Levene, Livy, 261, on Herodotus and Thucydides: ‘The earliest surviving historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, announce the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars respectively as their theme, and even if in practice Herodotus in particular introduces a great deal of other material, it is ultimately ancillary to the narrative of war.’ 3 Virgil, Aeneis 1.1; 6.851–3, trans. by C. P. Cranch: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento / (hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem, / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. 4 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.16.7, trans. by T. J. Luce: ‘Abi, nuntia’ inquit ‘Romanis, caelestes ita velle ut mea Roma caput orbis terrarum sit; proinde rem militarem colant sciantque et ita posteris tradant nullas opes humanas armis Romanis resistere posse.’ 5 See Levene, Livy, 261. 6 Recognized by Brian Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome 31 BC-AD 284 (London: Routledge, 2002), 13. 7 D. S. Potter, Literary Texts and the Roman Historian (London: Routledge, 1999), 71. 8 John Matthews, Review of Orose et ses idées, by Benoît Lacroix, Medium Aevum 36 (1967): 171. 9 Arnaldo Momigliano, The Confict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 99. 10 Brenda Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence: A History. The Bible, Virgil, Orosius, Augustine, and Dante (New York: Continuum, 2012), 1. See Livy, Ab urbe condita, Preface. 11 The phrase is from R. A. Markus, Christianity in the Roman World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 11. For Orosius’s reworking of Livy, see Anke Walter, Time in Ancient Stories of Origin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 212. 12 Theresa Urbainczyk, Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 21. 13 Eutropius’s Breviarium has a similar focus, as Willem den Boer has noted: ‘the one thread which runs throughout the book...is the dignity of war. War was always better than peace without honour’. Willem Den Boer, Some Minor Roman Historians (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 164. 14 Peter Van Nuffelen understands that Orosius’s emphasis on suffering aligns his text with the apologetic enterprise of De civitate Dei. Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 39–40. Augustine and Orosius’s approaches to disaster are similar; see Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.2. 15 For example, this is demonstrated in the narrative of Philip of Macedon’s reign, 3.14.10, 1:161. 16 Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence, 59. 17 Chronicon 2–3. 18 3 Preface 1, 1:134: …scriptores autem etsi non easdem causas, easdem tamen res habuere propositas: quippe cum illi bella, nos bellorum miserias evolvamus. Orosius’s

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focus on misery led Émile Mejean in his 1861 thesis to describe Orosius as a ‘ffth-century misanthrope’, but later critical receptions have foregrounded the optimism in Orosius’s historiographical vision. See Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 174; A. T. Fear, ‘The Christian Optimism of Paulus Orosius’, in From Orosius to the Historia Silense: Four Essays on Late Antique and Early Medieval Historiography of the Iberian Peninsula (Bristol: HiPLAM, 2005), 1–16; Fabrizio Fabbrini, Paolo Orosio: uno storico (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1979), 375–83; Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 1–2. For a discussion of war and glory under ancient Rome, see Andrew Erskine, Roman Imperialism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 39–49. Shaw, ‘War and Violence’, 134. Fear, Orosius, 23; Casimiro Torres Rodríguez, Paulo Orosio: su vida y sus obras (Santiago de Compostela: Instituto Padre Sarmiento de estudos gallegos, 1985), 65. Torres Rodríguez, Paulo Orosio, 65. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 81. Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Some Observations on Causes of War in Ancient Historiography’, Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1984), 24. Momigliano, ‘Some Observations’, 24. Walter A. Goffart, ‘Conspicuously Absent: Martial Heroism in the Histories of Gregory of Tours and Its Likes’, in Barbarians, Maps, and Historiography: Studies on the Early Medieval West (Ashgate, Surrey: Variorum, 2009), 110. Prologue 14, 1:9: …verum etiam tanto atrocius miseros quanto longius a remedio verae religionis alienos... Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 131. Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence, 59: ‘Orosius accepts, even exults in the sufferings that he deems the story of human history, a precondition to a historical theory that sees the present as overcoming the miscreant deeds of the past.’ Susan Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 350–1. This is most evident in the momentary refection of Book 3 interjected in the relation of the wars between Rome and various Italic peoples, and the simultaneous wars in Macedonia following the death of Alexander the Great (3.23.2–5, 1:178–9). Material from this section formed the basis for a chapter co-authored with Jamie Wood, ‘History-writing and Education in Late Antique and Early Medieval Iberia’, in Historiography and Identity II: Post-Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Gerda Heydemann and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 237–67. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the publishers Brepols and Routledge. Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence, 1. As Van Nuffelen argues, Orosius ‘challenges the canonical understanding of the past and the mindset it produces, but from within the education that underpins it. Orosius deploys all the sources and resources of his education, but to show that the idealization of the past, and concomitant rejection of the past, is mistaken.’ Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 10. Richard Flower, Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 16. See Natalia Lozovsky, ‘The Uses of Classical History and Medieval Geography in St Gall’, Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the

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Latin West and Beyond 300-1600, ed. by Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 78–82, for her argument that a manuscript of Orosius’s Historiae, St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 621, produced at St Gall in the late ninth century and with glosses dating from the late ninth to the eleventh centuries, was used as an educational tool. Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence, 72. 1.17.1–3, 1:67–8: At vero ante Vrbem conditam CCCCXXX anno raptus Helenae, coniuratio Graecorum et concursus mille navium, dehinc decennis obsidio ac postremo famosum Troiae excidium praedicatur. In quo bello per decem annos cruentissime gesto quas nationes quantosque populos idem turbo involverit atque adfixerit, Homeros poeta in primis clarus luculentissimo carmine palam fecit, nec per ordinem nunc retexere nostrum est quia et operi longum et omnibus notum videtur. Verumtamen qui diuturnitatem illius obsidionis, eversionis atrocitatem caedem captivitatemque didicerunt, videant si recte isto qualiscumque est praesentis temporis statu offenduntur. Augustine similarly opens Book 3 of De civitate Dei with a discussion of Troy, Homer, and Aeneas. Augustine, De civitate Dei 3.2–4. Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 77. Joseph Farrell, ‘Roman Homer’, in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. by Robert Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 266: ‘From what we know of Roman schools, Homer offered a central place in the curriculum.’ Henri-Irénée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. by G. Lamb (London: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 278: ‘First and foremost, of course, came Virgil, the Latin Homer, the poet par excellence, study of whom must be the beneft of any liberal culture.’ See also Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (London: Methuen and Co., 1977), 212–13; Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 567–8; E. G. Clark, ‘City of God(s): Augustine’s Virgil’, Proceedings of the Virgil Society 25 (2004): 84–5; Mark Joyal, Iain McDougall, and J. C. Yardley (eds), Greek and Roman Education: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2009), 231; Peter Van Nuffelen, ‘On Moral Ends: Orosius and the Circle of Life in History’, in Von Platon bis Fukuyama: biologistische und zyklische Konzepte in der Geschichtsphilosophie der Antike und des Abendlandes, ed. by David Engels (Brussels: Éditions Latomus, 2015), 131: ‘Given his paramount place in contemporary education, Vergil was the most common intertext in late ancient Latin literature.’ Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.8.4–6. Augustine, Confessiones 1.13–14, 10–12. Paulinus of Pella, Eucharisticon 73–5, ed. and trans. by Evelyn White: dogmata Socratus et bellica plasmata Homeri / erroresque legens cognoscere cognor Ulixis; / protinus et libros etiam transire Maronis. ‘I was compelled to read and learn the beliefs of Socrates and the martial fctions of Homer and the wanderings of Ulysses; and then straightaway I was compelled to traverse the books of Virgil too.’ For Augustine and Paulinus on their education, see Josiah Osgood, ‘The Education of Paulinus of Pella’, in From the Tetrarchs to the Theodosians: Later Roman History and Culture, 284450 CE, ed. by Scott McGill, Cristiana Sogno, and Edward Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 135–53. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 42. 1.18.1, 1:68: ludi litterarii disciplina nostrae quoque memoriae inustum est. A ludus litterarius was a school where children were trained in early literacy and perhaps numeracy. See W. Martin Bloomer, The School of Rome: Latin Studies and the Origins of Liberal Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 15.

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45 2.18.4–5, 1:124: Ecce...quantos de tot provinciis populis atque urbibus non magis explicui actus operum quam inplicui globos miseriarum: ‘quis enim cladem illius’ temporis, ‘quis fando funera explicet aut aequare lacrimis possit dolores’? Verumtamen haec ipsa, quia multo interiectu saeculorum exoleverunt, facta sunt nobis exercitia ingeniorum et oblectamenta fabularum... 46 See 3.10.1, 1:150. There are various points in the text where the emotional narrative voice interjects, for example 3.20.5, 1:173. For a discussion of exempla see Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 63–92. 47 The rhetorical art of emotional appeal is discussed by Quintilian in Book 6 of his Institutio oratoria. See Richard A. Katula, ‘Quintilian on the Art of Emotional Appeal’, Rhetoric Review 22 (2003): 5–15. 48 This is in contrast to the contemporary Historia sacra of Sulpicius Severus, which reconstructs events from the Old Testament into a Christian history. 49 The narrative voice addresses Augustine in the second person at various points, either to limit the scope of the work in reaction to Augustine’s own writings (3.4.6, 1:145), or to exceed them (6.1.12, 2:164). 50 Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 9: ‘Orosius’ intention is not so much the exposition of a Christian theology of history as an attempt to destabilize the traditional Roman view of the past as glorious and praiseworthy – a view that makes it hard for elite Romans to see the present in its true colours.’ 51 See Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 69: ‘...as Orosius remarks, ancient (given his apologetic slant, that label equals pagan) historians systematically leave out the number of dead on the Roman side so as to enhance the glory of the victory – except when remarkably few actually fell in battle. Overdetermined by their education, contemporary pagans have no idea what real suffering is and how much blood the rise of Rome has cost.’ 52 See specifcally 4.1.12–13, 2:12; 5.3.4, 2:88; and 4.20.7–10, 2:162–3, as discussed in Chapter 1, 23. The distorted morality of pagan historians as represented by Orosius is recognized Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 62–3: ‘Developing a critique already voiced by Augustine, Orosius accuses his pagan adversaries of putting glory above everything else. The number of dead does not count, as long as wars add to the glory of Rome... In such a skewed rhetorical universe, the magnitudo laudis is determined by the magnitudo sceleris.’ 53 4.11.4, 2:38: Quis, rogo, duarum civitatum unum bellum per annos tres et viginti gestum fando explicet, quot reges Carthaginiensium, quot consules Romanorum, quot agmina exercituum, quantum numerum navium contraxerit profigarit oppresserit? 54 Augustine, De civitate Dei 3.18. 55 Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 3.18, 116: Si enarrare vel commemorare conemur, nihil aliud quam scriptores etiam nos erimus historiae. 56 4.11.4, 2:38: si illa ad plenum perpensa videantur, de praesentibus iudicetur. 57 See Alfred Hiatt, ‘Mapping the Ends of Empire’, in Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 60, and Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 82. 58 David J. Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 20. Barbara Goff argues persuasively for the necessity of applying postcolonial theory to the feld of classics. Barbara Goff (ed.), Classics and Colonialism (London: Duckworth, 2005), 6–19. 59 See for example: Lorna Hardwick and Carol Gillespie (eds), Classics in PostColonial Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Susan A. Stephens and Phiroze Vasunia, Classics and National Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Matthew P. Loar, Carolyn MacDonald, and Dan-el Padilla

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Peralta (eds), Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Patrice D. Rankine, Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, and African American Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006); Phiroze Vasunia, The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Katherine Blouin and Ben Akrigg, Handbook of Classics and Postcolonial Theory (London: Routledge, forthcoming); Mathura Umachandran, ‘More Than a Common Tongue: Dividing Race and Classics across the Atlantic’, Eidolon, https://eidolon.pub/ more-than-a-common-tongue-cfd7edeb6368, last accessed 13 July 2021; Tracey L. Walters, African American Women and the Classicist Tradition: Black Women Writers from Wheatley to Morrison (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Tristan Samuels, ‘Herodotus and the Black Body: A Critical Race Theory Analysis’, Journal of Black Studies 46, no. 7 (2015): 723–41; Shelley P. Haley, ‘Be Not Afraid of the Dark: Critical Race Theory and Classical Studies’, in Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies, ed. by Laura Nasrallah and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 27–49. Recognized by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffths, and Helen Tiffn, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), 1. For the opposite view, as well as the assumption of British colonial power rather than any other, see Justin D. Edwards, Postcolonial Literature: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 9. Ashcroft et al., Empire Writes Back, 2. Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 3: ‘postcolonial writers [have] sought to undercut thematically and formally the discourses which supported colonization – the myths of power, the race of classifcations, the imagery of subordination. Postcolonial literature, therefore, is deeply marked by experiences of cultural exclusion and division under empire.’ 5.1.3, 2:82: Ecce quam feliciter Roma vincit tam infeliciter quidquid extra Romam est vincitur. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 82. Christopher Kelly, The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 19. Cicero, De offciis 1.35: Quare suscipienda quidem bella sunt ob eam causam, ut sine iniuria in pace vivatur. Reiterated in De republica, 3.23. Simon James extends the disinclination to engage with the reality of war from ancient thought to modern academic writing: ‘The horrors of conquest are often skated over with haste to reach the more comfortable ground of provincial development and “Romanization”... After the initial conquests, outside the special and horribly fascinating context of the gladiatorial arena, violence of any kind is rarely discussed as a factor in provincial life. Emphasis is placed on the collaborative nature of developing the empire, through foundation of cities, building communication and international trade, driven by the convergence of provincial ruling classes sharing the values and trappings of Greco-Roman civilization.’ Simon James, Rome and the Sword: How Warriors and Weapons Shaped Roman History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011), 15. Polybius’s words are here preserved in an unattributed fragment preserved in the Suda. Polybius, Fragment 99, 6:552–3. For a similarly pro-Roman perspective on war, see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.72. Augustus claimed to have enacted a just war against the Alpine tribes (Res gestae divi Augusti 26), echoed by Suetonius (Augustus 21.2). For more on just war, see Nathan Rosenstein, ‘War and Peace, Fear and Reconciliation at Rome’, in War and

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Peace in the Ancient World, ed. by Kurt A. Raafaub (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 229; P. A. Brunt, ‘Laus Imperii’, in Imperialism in the Ancient World, ed. by P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 159–91; Jane Webster, ‘The Just War: Graeco-Roman Texts as Colonial Discourse’, in TRAC 94: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference Durham 1994 (Oxford: Oxbow, 1995), 1–10; and Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, and Identity, 18. For a detailed discussion of defensive imperialism, including the ancient concept of this term and its reception in modern criticism, see Erskine, Roman Imperialism, 36–49; Kurt A. Raafaub (ed.), War and Peace in the Ancient World (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 19; Brunt, ‘Laus Imperii’, 159–91. Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 20. Tacitus, Agricola 30.10: Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari, si pauper, ambitiosi, quos non Oriens, non Occidens satiaverit... Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. Similarly, Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico contains a speech for the Gallic leader Critognatus, where the imperial power of Rome is contrasted unfavourably with the Cimbri and the Teutoni, enemies who, in the fctionalized words of Critognatus, at least leave the Gauls their laws, rights, lands, and liberty. Caesar, Commentarii de bello gallico 7.77. 5.1.2, 2:82: …unde arbitror esse dicturos: ‘ecquid his temporibus beatius, quibus contiunui triumphi, celebres victoriae, divites praedae, nobiles pompae, magni ante currum reges et longo ordine victae gentes agebantur?’ 5.1.6, 2:83: ...fracti caede bellorum, obsidionum fame exinaniti, interfectis coniugibus ac liberis suis ob remedia miseriarum concursu misero ac mutua caede iugulabant... 5.1.8, 2:83–4: Non requiro de innumeris diversarum gentium populis diu antea liberis, tunc bello victis, patria abductis, pretio venditis, servitute dispersis, quid tunc sibi maluerint quid de Romanis opinati sint, quid temporibus iudicarint. 5.1.9, 2:84: Omitto de regibus magnarum opum, magnarum virium, magnae gloriae, diu potentissimis, aliquando captis, serviliter catenatis, sub iugum missis, ante currum actis, in carcere trucidatis. As argued by Ashcroft et al., Empire Writes Back, 6. Ashcroft et al., Empire Writes Back, 6. 5.1.14, 2:85: Olim cum bella toto Orbe fervebant, quaeque provincia suis regibus suis legibus suisque moribus utebatur, nec erat societas adfectionum ubi dissidebat diversitas postestatum. In his Oratio de laudibus Constantini (16.2), Eusebius of Caesarea similarly organizes his polemic according to antithesis, where a world characterized by variance and division with a multiplicity of government had dire consequences. 5.2.1, 2:86: Mihi autem prima qualiscumque motus perturbatione fugienti, quia de confugiendi statione securo, ubique patria, ubique lex et religio mea est. Perhaps identifed here specifcally because of their perceived location on the outer reaches of the western empire. References to the Orkney Islands in the Historiae can be interpreted in the same way, as illustrating Orosius’s fully ‘universal’ knowledge of the world. For a similar rhetorical construction using the compass points, see also Eusebius, Oratio de laudibus Constantini 10.6. Henri-Irénée Marrou, ‘Saint Augustin, Orose et l’Augustinisme historique’, La storiografa altomedievale, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 17, vol. 1 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1970), 82, recognizes the signifcance of this passage, highlighting the indivisible nature of Roman and Christian identity as presented by Orosius and seeing the evocation

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of the eschatological heavenly ‘City of God’, but in the present good and hope in future good. For more on Orosius’s movements around the Mediterranean, see Victoria Leonard, ‘The Origin of Zealous Intolerance: Paulus Orosius and Violent Religious Confict in the Early Fifth Century’, Vigiliae Christianae 71, no. 3 (2017): 261–84. R. A. Markus, ‘The Roman Empire in Early Christian Historiography’, Downside Review 81 (1963): 351. François Paschoud, Roma aeterna: études sur le patriotisme romain dans l’Occident latin à l’époque des Grandes Invasions (Institut suisse: Rome, 1967), 290. 5.2.6, 2:87: Inter Romanos … Romanus, inter Christianos Christianus, inter homines homo. Recognized by Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence, 57. For a discussion of multiple identities in other ancient sources, particularly Pompeius Trogus, see Erskine, Roman Imperialism, 56–7. For the same recognition in Favorinus of Arles, see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–8.

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Introduction Written in fervent defence of Christianity, the catalyst for the composition of the Historiae is disaster. This theme thoroughly preoccupies the text, with the entirety of history conceived in unmitigated terms of bad times and good, a catalogue of calamities that could only be terminated by the birth of Christ (1 Prologue 13–15, 1:9). Orosius’s principal task is to explain the vicissitudes of humanity, such as the rise and fall of empires, the fates of individual rulers, the wars fought between and within nations, and natural disasters like famine or food. The authorial approach imbues the events of the past and present with a meaning beyond the literal and assimilates them into the Orosian vision of history, which holds the authority of the Christian God at its core: all power and order are from God (2.1.3, 1:84). Orosius argues that the course of time is not governed by fate or the actions of individuals, but by the mysterious will of the divine: ‘…all these events were arranged by the ineffable mysteries and the most profound judgements of God and did not happen by the powers of man or by uncertain accident’ (2.2.4, 1:45).1 But the fall of Rome, occurring almost 400 years after the Incarnation, threatens the credibility of Orosius’s polemical design. How could a civilization such as Rome suffer such catastrophe and destruction if the coming of Christ had already effected the miraculous improvement of human affairs? In response, Orosius develops a theosophical system that attributes the horror of the sack to sinful human behaviour that God punishes as divine judge (iudex omnium, 7.3.2, 3:20). The Christian God is ultimately responsible for the sack but not culpable. Human sin is represented as the cause of disaster, compelling the interference of God in human affairs, blessing with peace and punishing with war. This retributivist theology has a strong didactic purpose: Orosius dramatizes disaster to align sin with disbelief, in contrast with Christian ideals of virtue that enable bloodless war. The sack of Rome is a disaster of greatest signifcance within the text, and the relative proximity of the sack to the composition of the Historiae, with an interim of only around seven years, would encourage the expectation that it would preoccupy the text. But the narrative is transformed from that of a destructive

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invasion by a hostile enemy into that of a peaceful non-event that cleanses Rome of the scourge of paganism.2 The weight and impact of the sack are attenuated in Orosius’s retelling of history; the sack is mitigated as a gentle divine correction overlaid with symbolism that replaces the violence and destruction.

Sin Sin is an essential category in Orosius’s perspective on the world, which is dominated by division: Christians are distinct from non-Christians, right belief separated from wrong, right worship divided from wrong, and good behaviour from bad.3 This division of human action and belief is part of a wider discourse of partition in the Historiae, which takes place ethnographically between nations and peoples, geographically between continents, empires, regions, and provinces, and politically between forms of government and individual rulers. The concept of original sin is a fundamental principle in the Historiae and is established before the historical narrative commences; sin and its punishment begin with the very frst man (1.1.11, 1:11). As Fabrizio Fabbrini observes, Orosius focuses on Adam less as the frst man than as the frst sinner.4 To Orosius, the human race is inherently fawed. Humans were created by God to be righteous and immaculate (rectum atque inmaculatum), but they became depraved by lusts and were made sordid with sins (1.3.1, 1:42). The world is governed by divine providence which is just and good (1.1.9, 1:11). But man is changeable in nature, weakened and made stubborn by his ‘freedom of choice’ (libertate licentiae), an allusion to the Fall, and he requires guidance and reproval from God for his immoderation (1.1.9, 1:11). God is the divine creator and judge, and the judgement of those who sin will continue as long as man inhabits the earth, whether that is recognized or not (1.3.2, 1:42). Orosius associates sin with deliberate disbelief: those pagans who refuse to believe and will not be persuaded by the Scriptures are condemned to sin and suffer punishment. The sin of greatest consequence in the Historiae is that of determined and defant disbelief in the Christian God, which is allied with a lack of Christian worship, a continued worship of pagan deities, and the persecution of Christians. A crucial element of Orosius’s apologetic argument is that the sins of humanity are divinely punished with disasters and warfare (1.1.12, 1:11–12). For what is warfare, wonders Orosius, but evil befalling one side or another (1.1.12, 1:11)? The divine sanction of peace is a reward for Christian belief, and the suffering of disturbances (inquietari) is punishment for blasphemy: Hence, insofar as the world exists tranquilly, it is so because of those who believe; insofar as it is perniciously disturbed, it is so as punishment for those who blaspheme, while the faithful Christians are free from anxiety through all events, who securely have the peace of eternal life, or advantageously so even in this world. (7.3.3, 3:288)5

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Orosius represents the earthly experiences of Christians and pagans as distinct; Christian faith profts those who believe, and Christians are not condemned to suffer war, disaster, or famine like pagans. Christians can be free from anxiety with the promise of eternal life. Juxtaposed with those who believe (credentia) are not unbelievers, but those who blaspheme (blasphemantes), those who publicly declare their lack of faith and attack Christianity, suffering disaster as a result. This discourse of division between Christian peace and pagan punishment is crucial for Orosius’s representation of the sack of Rome, where the conceit fnds personifcation: miraculously, the Christians are protected and saved, whereas the Roman pagans are scourged by the invading Goths, fnding sanctuary in the Churches by masquerading as Christians. Orosius categorically and consistently argues that it is the mercy of God which allows humankind to fourish, but humanity is responsible for its own misery, which arises from sin, which is man’s excessive use of his free will (2.3.5, 1:89). Where the circumstance of peace or war is attributed to God, the text becomes particularly defensive and the apologetic against contemporary pagans becomes most clear, often addressing them directly. The appeal to recognize the deserved wretchedness of humanity is directed against ‘those who especially complain foolishly about Christian times’, that is, contemporary pagans (2.3.5, 1:47).6 Orosius simultaneously argues that the Christian God is an interfering deity, that he determines the course of time and events on earth, but that he is not culpable for misery and disaster, which are divinely sent but are punishment for human sin. The core of this argument is determined by a specifc historical event, the sack of Rome. Orosius uses the macro to explain the micro; all of history, from the Creation to the present, is utilized to demonstrate that the sack was a consequence of the persistent pagan worship of the Romans, a punishment directed by God but one that he was not responsible for. The Historiae can be understood as a text with a singular purpose: to situate the sack of Rome within an apologetic schema that explains misery and disaster in human history through the authority of God as a divine judge who directs events on earth and justly punishes sinful behaviour. Attempts to rationalize the catastrophe preoccupy the text, pervading the narrative long before the historical account of the sack begins in Book 7. In Book 1, Orosius takes the historical exemplar of the fall of Babylon to foreground the survival of Rome following the Gothic invasion: the difference of Christianity determines the fates of the two empires, with the preservation of Rome because of its Christian emperor, Christian citizens, and Christian saints: …in the one case [Babylon] the turpitude of the passions was punished in the king; in the other [Rome] the very serene tranquillity of the Christian religion was preserved in the king; in Babylon, without reverence for religion, furious licence satisfed thirst for pleasure; in Rome, there

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were Christians who showed mercy, and Christians to whom mercy was shown, and Christians because of whose memory and in whose memory mercy was shown. (2.3.7, 1:47)7 Orosius concludes the historical juxtaposition with a direct attack on his opponents, that they should cease their complaints about Christianity, and instead refect upon the reality of a past rocked by disasters, disturbed by wars, and cursed by crimes, altogether a constant stream of misery (2.3.8– 10, 1:89). The horrors of the past are used as a rhetorical weapon to threaten contemporary pagans: they must pray to the Christian God, who alone has the power to prevent a return to catastrophic times (2.3.10, 1:90). Orosius exhorts his opponents to Christian conversion by expressions of regret in the sack of Rome, an insignifcant anomaly in an otherwise uninterrupted peace, but one that could nonetheless be resolved through prayer (1.21.19, 1:77). Pernicious and stubborn pagan disbelief is responsible for the sack, and those blasphemers are ignorant of the mercy and authority of God that is demonstrated fundamentally by the survival of Rome, ordained as the fnal and enduring empire. Orosius’s ‘objectors’ are ‘enemies of truth’ (inimici veritatis) who see with a ‘defective eye’ (vitioso oculo, 4.6.38, 2:26). The pagan perspective of recent events is fawed; Orosius’s opponents do not appreciate the relative leniency of the sack by Alaric, a Christian and a misguided ally of Rome, in comparison with the fate that was narrowly avoided in the near invasion of Italy by Radagaisus, ‘a pagan, a barbarian, and a true Scythian’ (paganus barbarus et vere Scytha, 7.37.9, 3:109), the most ferocious of all former and present enemies (7.37.4, 3:107). God’s punishment is a caress that admonishes and redeems, saving Rome from the more savage, pagan enemy. Orosius expects the epiphany of this understanding to produce rejoicing in the mercy of God and the compassion of the Gothic sack. The Roman pagans should, after all, be grateful for the ‘bearable discipline’ (disciplina tolerabilis, 4.6.40, 2:27) that is for their own beneft. The pagan realization that Orosius expects exceeds conversion to Christianity; opponents should learn to despise the miseries of their own past rather than celebrate the illustrious glory of famed oppressors (4.6.41, 2:27). The perception of Roman hegemony and martial suppression of non-Romans in laudable and idealized terms is undermined throughout the Historiae. The mercy of God and the mildness of the sack are clear when the invasion is considered within a relative historical context that encompasses all disasters, and pagans should pray to God that miseries like those suffered in the past do not return. Orosius demonstrates the leniency of God and the fortune of Rome in avoiding a more dire punishment from invasion by Radagaisus, with the occupying force instead lead by Alaric, the Christian ally of Rome. But Orosius’s portrayal of the Christian God is not always compassionate and kind; following the narrative of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the frst book, the portrayal of God is more

132 The sack of Rome severe and threatening, justly destroying the land with fre and brimstone (1.5.9, 1:46–7).8 The biblical exemplum of Sodom and Gomorrah functions as a cautionary tale, a promised punishment if the Gothic invasion of Rome is ignored and pagan sacrifce continues (1.6.5, 1:48).

Minimizing the main event The pointed comparison of the punishments of Babylon and Rome, directed at those who spit on Christ, emphasizes the survival of Rome and dismisses the impact of the Gothic invasion (1.6.1, 1:47). Orosius employs all of his rhetorical skill and force to downplay the sack, attacking his opponents and denigrating their arguments. He undermines the authenticity of the pagan opposition by representing it as deceitful, and trivializes his attackers as few (rari) and muttering (murmurent) in ‘out-of-the-way places’ (in angulis, 1.6.2–3, 1:47). But the most effective and sustained polemic centres on the brief interruption of customary pleasures, that the Roman people will say that they have suffered nothing if the circus is restored to them (1.6.4, 1:48).9 This reaction simultaneously minimizes the sack and reveals the Roman people as vacuous and sinful. This is an early allusion to a theme that is developed extensively in subsequent books, of the sack overlaid with a moral purpose, to cleanse and edify the Roman populace in an ordeal that sorts and separates, in an echo of the Final Judgement. Orosius minimizes the Gothic invasion with a Christian gibe against the superfcial and placatory pagan culture of entertainment, of Juvenal’s bread and circuses, that if the circus is restored, nothing has happened.10 Theatre attendance assumes a particularly anti-Christian signifcance in the Historiae, and, once associated with pagan sacrifce, it becomes a means to shift blame for disaster from Christian to pagan (4.21.5–7, 2:70). It is the theatres and not the current Christian times that are responsible for the fall of Rome to the Goths; the theatre has been forbidden by the true God but solicited by demons. The demand for sacrifce from the pagan gods is evidence of their wickedness, as it is not so much the blood of animals but the virtue of men that is consumed. However, the confation of theatres and sacrifce is necessary for the construction of the theatre as a fgurative altar (ara) for the sacrifce or slaughter (trucidantur) of men’s virtue (virtutum, 4.21.7, 2:70). In his burst of invective against pagan worship, Orosius creates a maelstrom of negative association: the theatre is immoral, it is demanded by demons, associated with blood sacrifce, and responsible for the perdition of men. This highly critical and particular attack on pagan worship is relatively anomalous within the Historiae, but comes at a sensitive point in the text where the denunciation of pagan opponents intensifes in the apportioning of blame for disaster. Blood sacrifce to appease the gods and theatre attendance are confated in a negative representation of a pagan religion that is the equivalent opposite of Christianity. This polemical discourse is intensifed with reference to

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human sacrifce; the Carthaginians once performed but quickly rejected the practice, in contrast with the obstinate and ungodly Romans, who continue to observe human sacrifce (4.21.8–9, 2:70). Orosius deliberately obscures the distinction between the Punic and Roman practices, implying the sacrifce of humans is part of contemporary Roman pagan religion. The tension here is raised by repetition of the verb facere (‘to do’) through the tenses to a near-hysterical level ( factum est, ft, amatur et clamatur ut fat, 4.21.9, 2:70). In emphasizing sacrifce as not only a past but also a present practice, the text plays on Christian fears, that wilful ignorance of God and persistent pagan worship will earn the wrath of God and the promise of further punishment. For the Historiae, a text which covers all of human history, the sack of Rome is the disaster of greatest signifcance, although the event is given sparing textual space, in accordance with the approach to downplay the invasion. The text employs various rhetorical tactics to engage with and reconcile the sack of Rome specifcally and the theme of disaster more widely. A tight control is maintained on the reader’s interpretation of and response to the historical narrative, in the constant manipulation of events to suit the apologetic of the text. Orosius compares the past and the present to frame the past as much worse than the present, and the ‘disasters’ of the present as relatively gentle.11 Catastrophe that occurs after the birth of Christ is signifcantly downplayed, in concurrence with the apologetic trajectory of improving time following the creation of a universal Christian commonwealth. With the intensifcation of the debate concerning which religious practices are responsible, blame for disaster is shifted frmly away from God and Christians and onto pagans and the multitude of demons demanding sacrifce and sin. The technique of historical synchronicity, comparing historical events to facilitate the presentation of past disasters as much worse than the present, is most effective in the parallels drawn between the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BCE and the Gothic sack in 410 CE, described by Fear as the ‘centrepiece of Orosius’s defence of Christianity’.12 When considering the disasters of the present, as a means of consolation, Orosius directs his reader to ‘recall the Gauls’, to apply the events of the past to the present in order to improve their perspective in relative terms and demonstrate that things could be much worse (3.22.15, 1:178). The Gallic sack is terrifying and devastating, with the narrative concentrating on the slaughter perpetrated by ruthless Gallic invaders, and the despair following the siege of the City (2.19.7, 1:126). The Gallic sack saw the brutal massacre of the Roman senators, but during the Gothic invasion scarcely could a senator be found to have died, and those that had had perished accidentally while hiding (2.19.13, 1:127). The Gallic siege of Rome raged for six months, while the Gothic sack lasted only for three days (2.19.13, 1:127). Orosius’s representation of the two events is disingenuous; before the actual sacking of the city in 410 the Goths besieged Rome three times over two years, and it is very probable that the Roman

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inhabitants were similarly worn down and desperate in the early ffth century CE as in the fourth century BCE.13 Orosius gives an emotive account of the physical and psychological impact of the invasion with the image of the departing Gauls leaving behind a ruined city. The physical reality of the city has been damaged and altered to the point that it is unrecognizable to its inhabitants, reduced to a mass of shapeless ruins, a bleak landscape of silence and open spaces (2.19.10–11, 1:126). The Gauls have shaken the city to its very core, compelling the traumatized survivors to attempt to abandon Rome for another place altogether (2.19.11, 1:126). Orosius directly juxtaposes the two sacks of Rome, encouraging the interpretation that the Gallic sack was a consequence of the sins of Rome and pagan worship, bringing the city to the brink of annihilation. Conversely, the Goths are Christian and sent by God as a gentle correction for Rome’s persistent Christian disbelief. The Goths are respectful and merciful in their behaviour, abandoning their intention to plunder and instead driving the confused hoards into sacred places, which function as safe refuges (2.19.13, 1:127). Orosius even argues that the Goths lacked brutality and aggression to such an extent that lightning divinely sent (missus e caelo ignis evertit) had to fnish the task of destroying the bronze beams and huge structures in the Forum by fre (2.19.14–15, 1:127). Orosius’s account of the Gallic sack reproduces the Livian narrative but with the suppression of the pagan religious elements, such as the alarm-cry of Juno’s sacred geese and the preservation of the sacred vessels by the Vestal virgins.14 This simplifes the account of the pre-Incarnation disaster, framing it more clearly as a foil to the much later Gothic sack, emphasizing the extremity of past disasters in contrast with the relative tranquillity of the present. Despite Orosius’s sustained attempts at textual minimalization, it is diffcult to overstate the conceptual signifcance of the fall of Rome in the Historiae; it is more than another historical event. It stands apart within a text constructed around the travails of human history, where the sacking of cities, warfare, slaughter, and disasters are common currency. The sack is the culmination of the Orosian narrative of the irreligion and wickedness of humanity before Christianity, transcending the confnes of time to function as a punishment for persistent paganism and wilful ignorance of the truth of Christianity throughout history. The event is the crucible of the text, the moment that threatens to invalidate Orosius’s use of history for apologetic ends, that proves the pagan polemical attack that the Christian God is weak and ineffective, and that neglected pagan deities require worship to avert disaster. The catastrophe jeopardizes the very existence of Christianity as a credible religion less than twenty years after the pagan cults were outlawed. The threatened restoration of pagan sacrifce simmers beneath the textual surface in the tense and troubled period of anticipation before the Gothic Radagaisus invaded (7.37.7, 3:108). Anti-Christian feeling was palpable in Rome, and the name of Christ was publicly reproached. Similarly, Eucherius, the son of Stilicho, promised to mark the beginning of his reign

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following the usurpation of the emperor Honorius by restoring the pagan temples and overthrowing the churches (7.38.6, 3:113). Disregarding the historical accuracy of this narrative claim, it is this fnal threat of the resurrection of the old rites that prompts God to send the Goths to sack the city, a long-awaited punishment that can no longer be deferred (7.38.7, 3:113). Orosius’s apologetic positions the Gothic sack as the fnal nail in the coffn of paganism rather than an episode in the continuing struggle between monotheism and polytheism. The credibility of the text and the authority of Orosius’s polemic rely upon the Christian narrative of the sack becoming the accepted historical version, a version that is conventionally challenged in modern criticism but is nonetheless the surviving version; there is no contemporary pagan equivalent that has survived completely to match or contest Orosius’s description.15 The vindication of Christianity is of paramount importance in Orosius’s representation of the fall of Rome, achieved through the fctionalized reality of the sack as a peaceful non-event. The city and its citizens hardly suffered as the result of a hostile invasion by an aggressive military force following a breakdown in diplomatic negotiations and a prolonged siege. The sack is the centrepiece of Orosius’s apologetic argument against paganism, but the disaster is covered in a single sentence: ‘On the third day after the barbarians had entered the city, they departed of their own accord, after burning a number of the buildings’ (7.39.15, 3:355).16 Orosius’s efforts to downplay the Gothic sack make the event conspicuous, especially because such toned-down descriptions of atrocities are rare; it is more usual in general terms that violent occurrences are embellished and exaggerated.17 The Christian landscape of Rome proves central in the salvation of the populace, following Alaric’s instruction to the barbarian hordes, although hungry for plunder (praedae), not to harm those who sought refuge in the city’s churches (7.39.1, 3:113–14). The two largest churches in Rome, St Peter’s and St Paul’s, are given special dispensation as places of sanctuary, endorsing the special relationship the saints had with early Christian Rome and their role as joint protectors of the city, pointedly highlighting the failure of the pagan deities.18 The churches of Rome as havens of safety are similarly exploited by Augustine, who represents the sack as a new type of historical event, one that does not follow the usual conventions of warfare, because of Christianity. The savagery of the barbarian invaders is neutralized, and the Romans sheltered in the city’s basilicas.19 Augustine is swift in his amendment to clarify that it is not the brutal barbarians who were merciful, attributing the miraculous survival of Rome’s citizens emphatically to the Christian God. The ‘ferce and savage minds’ (truculentissimas et saevissimas mentes) of the Goths were restrained and controlled by God as a demonstration of the mercy of a divine Christian punishment, a conceit echoed in Orosius’s portrayal of the Gothic invaders as tools of God sent for the just retribution of pagan Rome (7.39.2, 3:114).20 For both Orosius and Augustine, the mercy of

136 The sack of Rome the Christian God is shown through the sanctifed Christian space in the city that preserves lives and prevents slaughter, while the atrocities committed fguratively and literally beyond the Christian boundary are the responsibility of the pagan deities. They diverge in Orosius’s denial and Augustine’s indifference: rather than trying to sustain the denial that the invasion was a disaster with devastation, slaughter, plundering, and fre, Augustine distinguishes between the Christian and pagan experience of the sack, with seeming indifference to the suffering of Roman pagans, whose punishment was inevitable. By contrast, Orosius entirely omits the violence and slaughter that must have accompanied the invasion in Alaric’s command that the invaders must refrain from bloodshed in their hunger for spoils (7.39.1, 1:114). Augustine’s narrative is characterized by justifed slaughter and destruction, whereas Orosius’s portrays a sack without violence. Orosius’s version of the Gothic invasion continually erodes the presupposition of hostility and destruction; especially in contrast to the past, the event cannot be described as a disaster. The admission that the Goths burned ‘a number of buildings’ (aliquantarum aedium incendio) is quickly minimalized by comparison with the burning of Rome around 50 BCE and the fre of Rome under Nero, where more damage was done (7.39.15–16, 3:116–17). Through praeteritio, Orosius draws attention to the Gallic sack by pointedly not highlighting the Gallic sack as a more severe catastrophe (7.39.17, 3:117). Then, the city was reduced to ashes (cineres), burned and conquered (incensae eversaeque); now, Orosius argues, the impact of Alaric’s attack is barely perceptible, attested only by the ruins of the fre that still remain (7.40.1, 3:117). Not only does the sack give no reason for complaint, but a consequence of the invasion is even represented in positive terms. The capture and forced marriage of Galla Placidia, daughter of the emperor Theodosius I, to the Gothic king Athaulf, is of ‘great beneft to the state’ in uniting the Goths and Romans in a single commonwealth: In this invasion, Placidia, the daughter of the princely Theodosius and sister of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, was captured and taken to wife by Athaulfus, a kinsman of Alaric’s, as if, by divine decree, Rome had given her as a hostage and special pledge. By her marriage with this most powerful barbarian king, she was of great beneft to the state. (7.40.2, 3:356)21 The narrative focus on the positive cannot conceal the forcible nature of Placidia’s ‘capture’, that even with ‘divine decree’ (divino iudicio), she is still a ‘hostage’ (obses).22 Orosius’s description elides the gravity of the situation, but Placidia was the only surviving daughter of the emperor Theodosius and a vital link to the Valentinian dynasty. Just as the emperor Valerian’s capture by the Persian king Shapur in 260 CE was a huge psychological blow to Rome, so Placidia’s must have been.

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The sack reworked: Jerome, Marcella, and Epistula 127 Orosius’s authorial strategy for coping with the disaster of the sack not only downplays the invasion but also diverts the narrative attention away from the chronology of events, focusing instead on a spurious anecdote concerning the suspension of the sack and the preservation of the sacred vessels of St Peter. He reports that amidst the confusion of the rampaging barbarians, a powerful Goth stumbles upon an elderly virgin of Christ (virgo Christi), perhaps sheltering in a church (7.39.4, 3:114). He politely asks (honeste exposceret, 7.39.3, 3:114) for gold and silver, and she compliantly hands over the sacred vessels of the Apostle Peter (7.39.5, 3:114). The Goth is astonished by the quantity, weight, and beauty of the riches, and he is moved to religious awe by the fear of God and the virgin’s faith (7.39.6, 3:114–15). In consternation, he sends word to Alaric, who orders that the vessels be returned to St Peter’s undamaged, along with the virgin and any other Christians (7.39.6, 3:115). The Gothic pillage of the city is halted midway in religious reverence, and the Goths with the Romans, both Christian and pagan, form a procession through the city: …to the great wonder of all, the gold and silver vessels, distributed one to each individual and raised above their heads, were carried openly; the pious procession was guarded on all sides for their protection by drawn swords; a hymn to God was sung publicly with Romans and barbarians joining in; in the sacking of the city, the trumpet of salvation sounded far and wide, and invited and struck all, even those lying in hidden places; from all sides the vessels of Christ came to the vessels of Peter. (7.39.8–10, 3:354)23 The pagans and Christians mingle together (admiscentur) in their profession of faith; the pagans escape an earthly death at the hands of the Goths but compound their heavenly fate in the judgement of God (7.39.10, 3:115). The more thickly the Romans came together (adgregantur), the more eagerly (avidius) the barbarians surrounded them as their defenders (defensores, 7.39.10, 3:115). Orosius’s account of the sack is eclipsed by this miraculous, salvifc procession, described as ‘one of the strangest and most moving passages of the whole work’.24 The anecdote originates from Epistula 127 from Jerome to Principia (c.412), protégée of Marcella, Jerome’s former patron.25 Orosius reworks and interpolates Jerome’s narrative into his version of the sack, although with different narrative consequences. This is evident in the confusion of the sack, the concentration on one soldier, the demand for treasure, the response of the holy woman that induces a change of attitude in the barbarians, and the escorting of the holy woman to a basilica. The correspondence of Jerome’s account, excerpted and modifed, in Orosius’s text raises questions about why letters were written and how they were collected,

138 The sack of Rome distributed, and published in the late ancient world. Orosius could have had access to the letter on his visit to Jerome in the Holy Land, or Jerome could have verbally communicated the story to him.26 It seems likely from the specifc ways Orosius conforms to and digresses from Jerome’s narrative that he was working from a written version of Epistula 127. Orosius’s virgo Christi, the fgure of central importance in his version of the sack, is in fact Marcella.27 The polite Christian Goth in the Historiae is described by Jerome as a ‘bloodstained victor’ (cruentus victor) who violently beats Marcella following her refusal to satisfy his request for gold. According to Jerome’s epistula, Marcella pleads against the threat of rape, and the barbarians are made merciful by Christ, escorting Marcella and Principia to the Basilica of St Paul, where they may fnd either safety or a tomb. Marcella dies a few days later. Orosius’s elaborations and elisions reveal his authorial priorities: the coarse dress (vili…tunica) Jerome’s Marcella wears proves her poverty, and she has no treasure to surrender, whereas Orosius’s virgin readily gives up the gold and silver vessels of St Peter. Marcella is ‘scourged’ and ‘beaten with cudgels’ (caesam fustibus fagellisque), but Orosius’s Goth threatens no violence or rape. Christ softens the hard heart of Marcella’s attacker (Christus dura corda mollivit), while it is specifcally fear of God (timore Dei) and the faith of the virgin ( fde virginis) that moves Orosius’s Goth to religious awe (reverentiam religionis, 7.39.6, 3:114–15). Jerome’s barbarians spontaneously deliver Marcella and Principia to the basilica of the Apostle Paul (apostoli Pauli basilicam); Orosius’s narrative has the virgin and other Christians present escorted to the basilica of the Apostle (7.39.6–7, 3:115). This is done on Alaric’s orders, reinforcing his portrayal as Christian and merciful. Small but signifcant inconsistencies reveal the manipulation of Jerome’s narrative in the Historiae; Jerome names the basilica that Marcella and Principia are taken to as dedicated to the Apostle Paul, while Orosius remains obscure about the location in his account and centralizes the sacred vessels of St Peter. Foregrounding the vessels of St Peter reinforces the notion of Rome as God’s chosen empire with the close association of the saint with the city of Rome already in the ffth century, and the portrayal of Peter as the frst pope.28 A consequence of this useful ambiguity is that the vessels of St Peter were ‘returned’ or ‘carried back’ nonsensically to St Paul’s Basilica. According to Jerome’s letter, Marcella and her companion Principia are escorted to the church to fnd safety, or a tomb (ut vel salutem vobis ostenderent, vel sepulcrum). Orosius, however, transforms the removal of Marcella into the fantastical Christian procession through the city, extending the number of participants, and centralizing the sacred vessels: ‘to the great wonder of all, the gold and silver vessels, distributed one to each individual and raised above their heads, were carried openly’ (7.39.8, 3:354).29 Jerome’s account ends with the focus on Marcella, on her spiritual and scriptural reaction to her suffering and death as a result of her injuries some days after the attack (post aliquot dies). Orosius’s virgin is not mentioned again;

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instead, the focus shifts to the ‘pious procession’ (pia pompa), protected by drawn swords and accompanied by hymn-singing barbarians and Romans, with pagans and Christians alike focking to the vessels (7.39.8, 3:115). Jerome’s vivid description of the fall of Rome dramatically interwoven with the death of Marcella made his Epistula 127 attractive material for Orosius when constructing his own version of the sack, which reappropriates Jerome’s narrative but with crucial differences: the invading enemy is Christianized and their hostility mitigated; any hint of violence or death is removed; the sacred vessels are added; and the parade through the city that suspends the sack is imagined. Orosius gives particular attention to revising the sack, risking the displeasure of his patron Jerome, who was still alive at the time of composition, as was Principia in all probability, who is completely elided from Orosius’s account. The anonymizing of Marcella and the reworking of her biographical tribute without acknowledgement to source or subject had the potential to irritate Jerome, especially given Jerome’s construction of orthodox authority based on his association with Marcella.30 Orosius is not the only writer to represent the fall of Rome through Jerome’s repurposed and highly symbolic narrative, overlaid with a new signifcance; the account of Principia is again distorted by Sozomen in his description of the sack in the Historia ecclesiastica, written in the 440s.31 Sozomen consolidates his own ideological agenda in the portrayal of Marcella, once again not mentioned by name. This time, she is young and beautiful, and a Nicene Christian. The Gothic soldier is an Arian, and his repeated attempts to rape her miraculously fail. He is so impressed by her chastity that he escorts her to the church of St Peter’s and gives her six pieces of gold.32 Orosius’s alterations to the narrative highlight his authorial method, that factual accuracy is not his primary concern and he is not afraid to transform with added invention the material he fnds in other sources, sources that reveal the ecclesiastical context that he was working within. Orosius reverses the expectations of the reader, of fnding a dire account of the fall of Rome, with slaughter, horror, and destruction, elements he uses to depict the Gallic sack of 390 BCE. Instead, he neutralizes the disastrous invasion of 410 CE: in the interpolated words of the Roman populace, nihil factum; the sack is a peaceful non-event (7.40.1, 3:117). The authorial strategy of minimalization is combined with distraction, where the reader’s anticipation of catastrophe is diverted by concentration on a specifc anecdote through which the sack is related. This discrete narrative refocuses from the micro to the macro, directing the course of events in the involvement of the Roman populace and the holy procession in praise of God accompanied by drawn swords, the trumpet of salvation, and hymns of praise. But Orosius’s expanded narrative ultimately does more than this; in opportunistic fashion, it transforms the sack entirely, from an obstacle that impedes the discourse of improving time into a narrative moment of pure positivity, rich in fgurative signifcance. The sack is initially portrayed as a punishment ordained by God, with the Gothic invasion as the ‘fnal and long-impending

140 The sack of Rome punishment’ of pagan Rome (7.38.7, 3:353). The audacious idolatry of ungrateful Rome could not be pardoned, but could be checked by the wrath of God (7.37.17, 3:111). The storming of the city takes place as the consequence of divine fury; the Gothic invasion is not a martial victory, but the chastisement of a proud, wanton, and blasphemous city (7.39.2, 3:114). The sack is imbued with a Christian signifcance that demonstrates the force of divine providence in directing human events and presiding over the course of history with conspicuous intervention; as a consequence, the neglect of Christian worship or deliberate ignorance of Christianity is rendered particularly nonsensical.

The sack transformed Orosius’s narrative of the sack becomes increasingly symbolic, with scriptural allusion taking precedence over any historical description. The glorious trumpet of Christian warfare sounds, and the sack assumes a new level of fgurative signifcance, becoming more than an intrinsic historical event, expanding into a crucible for the judgement and cleansing of pagan Rome. As the imagery becomes increasingly allegorical, the sack adopts a sense of timelessness, that the subjection of the Romans to a divine sorting is of wider consequence for humanity. This is no longer the relation of history, or even the relation of history with philosophical meaning. History has been transformed into a message of Christian morality, an imperative to Christian belief and worship, and a presage of the impending and inescapable judgement of humanity.33 Orosius draws on the Old and New Testaments to augment the rhetorical effect of the transformed sack and to indicate this as a moment of exceptional signifcance. These scriptural allusions emphasize the sack as a purge of the unworthy and irreligious, sorting the Christian faithful from the faithless, and the wrathful vengeance as well as the merciful benevolence of God. The pious procession of Goths and Romans through the city to sanctuary is intended to evoke the Book of Exodus and the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea: the Romans are the Egyptian persecutors and the Christians are the new Israelites, escaping oppression in a fnal cleansing; the drawn swords of the Goths on every side are the walls of water of the Red Sea held back by Moses’s hand; in both narratives, for the righteous, the procession is the way to safety, for the wicked it is a pitfall to unexpected death (1.10.15, 1:57). Orosius endorses his version of the sack by transposing the biblical imagery of the trumpet, encouraging the association between its scriptural function and its signifcance within the sack. The ‘trumpet of salvation’ sounds far and wide, ‘calling out’ and ‘rousing up’ (invitat ac pulsat) the Roman populace (7.39.9, 3:115). The ‘glorious trumpet of Christian warfare’ calls followers to spiritual life by its sweet music, leaving the disobedient, who are far from salvation and devoid of excuses, to die (reliquit ad mortem, 7.39.12, 3:116). The narrative operates on two levels: the literal

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events of the sack continue to be related, that those who do not join the procession risk physical harm, while a more prominent discourse overlies this narrative, that the disobedient who ignore the rousing call of Christian salvation will suffer a spiritual death in their disbelief. In the Old and New Testaments, the image of the trumpet signals human encounter with the divine, often within a context of resurrection, judgement, and transformation. In Exodus, the sound of the trumpet heralds the meeting of God and the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:16–18). In Revelation, the trumpet accompanies voices in heaven proclaiming that the earth has become the kingdom of Jesus and God, and He will reign eternally. This occurs within an apocalyptic context of judgement, that the raging of the nations prompts the wrath of God, and the judgement of the dead occurs, with the faithful and God-fearing rewarded, and the destroyers of the earth themselves destroyed (Revelation 11:15–18). In Corinthians, the sound of the last trumpet heralds the raising of the dead and a universal transformation of humanity (1 Corinthians 15:51–3). In Thessalonians, with the sound of the trumpet, the Lord will descend from heaven, judging the dead and the living who will ascend with Christ and be with the Lord forever (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). In the Historiae, the trumpet raises the spiritual ‘dead’, prompting spontaneous conversion in the euphoria of the procession which praises God and protects the citizens of Rome. The sounding trumpet effectively sorts the Roman populace, inviting all to life but leaving those who obstinately refuse the divine truth of Christianity to death. In an evocation of the Last Judgement, the sack is transformed into a sorting or sieving of the Roman populace according to their belief, as a great mass of living grain, fowing from the hiding places within the city (7.39.13, 3:116). Those who believe would be saved, but others would be burnt like dung or straw. The image of the sieve is an allusion to the Book of Amos, where God promises to shake the house of Israel ‘as one shakes with a sieve’ and that all sinners will die by the sword (Amos 9:9). The sieving of the people as the ‘living grain’ (grana viva, 7.39.13, 3:116) derives from the Gospel of Matthew and the analogy of the wheat and the tares: ‘…and he will clear his threshing-foor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fre’ (Matthew 4:12). Following Matthew, Rome is the threshing-foor, and the ‘wheat’, the Roman Christians, safely enter the ‘granary’, while those worthless and disobedient unbelievers are left for burning (7.39.14, 3:116).34 Scriptural overtones function as a counter-foil to the miraculous sieving of the Tiber’s water by the Vestal virgin Tuccia, proving her virtue.35 Orosius’s evocation of Matthew gives eschatological overtones to the sack. The event is intended to be understood as an echo of the Final Judgement, where the righteous and the sinful will be judged and separated by the divine. The central themes of resurrection, judgement, and transformation are consolidated by the apocalyptic sense of the sack, which serves to expand the relevance of the narrative. The fate of

142 The sack of Rome Rome’s citizens is more broadly human, and in temporal terms is not only immediate but also has an eternal resonance. The wider resonance of the sack as a transformative moment in human history rather than a specifc historical detail extends throughout the fnal chapters of the text. Rome has been cleansed of paganism; the gods and their worshippers no longer pollute the city and empire. The Christian community is the true successor to Rome. Only three further references are made to Orosius’s pagan detractors subsequent to the Gothic invasion, and two focus on the sack as a past event. Echoing the logic of the sack, insolent disbelievers have been justly punished by the wrath of God (7.41.6, 3:122). Fear interprets the ‘insolent disbelievers’ here not as pagans but as heretical Christians, particularly the Donatists.36 The second remaining reference to paganism observes that it is of little beneft to the pagan and little loss to the Christian that those who were set stubbornly against Christianity were able to survive the sack by masquerading as Christian (7.41.9, 3:122). The third and fnal reference comes within the closing passages of the work, where Orosius exhorts his ‘detractors’ (obtrectatores) (7.43.18, 363; 3:131), who have been represented as pagan throughout, to repent, to ‘blush at the truth’, and to ‘believe, fear, love, and follow the only true God’ (7.43.18, 363; 3:131). This statement is refexive, standing outside of the narrative of the text. It is a programmatic assertion of authority, that the Orosian apologetic is superior and compelling. It is not necessarily evidence that pagan opponents still exist, but that they have been eradicated in the transformation of the empire from a disputed religious territory to an exclusively Christian patria (7.38.7, 3:113).

Conclusion From the opening of the Historiae with the beginning of time and the Creation, the fall of Rome has been anticipated. Orosius traces a genealogy of sin from Adam to Augustus and the birth of Christ, and beyond. Divine providence mediates against sin throughout human history, particularly the defant disbelief of paganism. Orosius’s theology of the fawed nature of mankind, constantly in need of divine correction, culminates in the sack. Despite the restrictive textual space Orosius gives it, the sack is the moment of greatest signifcance, in a structural but also apologetic sense. The conviction of the text rests on the authorial manipulation of the event. All of history is interpreted through this moment, and the text itself can be understood as a historical-philosophical polemic devised in response. This is more than history with hindsight; Orosius conceptually reverses time, telling a narrative of the past from the sack. But Orosius does not just prove his apologetical point, that the disasters of the past are much worse than those of the present; he exceeds it, in the opportunistic transformation of the sack. A new narrative is created, where the sack functions in imitation of the Final Judgement, the Parousia without the visitation of Christ. In Christian

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theology, the Final Judgement is usually conceived of in pessimistic terms, with apocalyptic overtones, revelation of sin, and the proximity of eternal damnation and hell. But rather than a source of terror, the Christian experience of the sorting and punishing of Rome is in fact one of hope and happiness. God has mercifully liberated Rome from the pagan affiction, and the empire is better for it. Orosius’s ideological message is one of salvation, consolation, and joy for the surviving Christians, who are ultimately protected by God and live in an improved world. The continued suffering of the inhabitants of Rome is necessarily and wilfully repressed in a rationalization that dismisses their grievances in preference for the wider Christian moral of the providence of God and his just punishment of the sins of humanity.

Notes 1 2.2.4, 1:86: Vt autem omnia haec ineffabilibus mysteriis et profundissimis Dei iudiciis disposita, non aut humanis viribus aut incertis casibus accidisse perdoceam… 2 On Orosius’s version of the sack, see Mischa Meier, ‘Alarico: le tragedie di Roma e del conquistatore. Rifessioni sulle Historiae di Orosio’, in The Sack of Rome in 410 AD: The Event, Its Context and Its Impact, ed. by Johannes Lipps, Carlos Machado, and Philipp von Rummel (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013), 311–22; Neil McLynn, ‘Orosius, Jerome and the Goths’, in The Sack of Rome in 410 AD: The Event, Its Context and Its Impact, ed. by Johannes Lipps, Carlos Machado, and Philipp von Rummel (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013), 323–33; Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 181–5; Eduardo Fabbro, ‘“Capitur urbs quae totum cepit orbem”: The Fates of the Sack of Rome (410) in Early Medieval Historiography’, in The Medieval Chronicle X, ed. by Ilya Afanasyev, Juliana Dresvina, and Erik S. Kooper (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 49–67. 3 On sin in the Historiae, see Eugenio Corsini, Introduzione alle ‘Storie’ di Orosio (Turin: University of Turin, 1968), esp. 69–70; 85–105; Hans-Werner Goetz, Die Geschichtstheologie des Orosius, Impulse der Forschung 32 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 49–57; A. T. Fear, Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 7–9; Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, 187–91; Fabrizio Fabbrini, Paolo Orosio: uno storico (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1979), 311. 4 Fabbrini, Paolo Orosio, 311. Corsini stresses that whilst Eusebius and Orosius adopted different historiographical methods in relation to original sin, fundamentally they held to the same objective: to delimit precisely and explain the entirety of human history using a chronological interpretative schema. Corsini, Introduzione alle ‘Storie’ di Orosio, 59. 5 7.3.3, 3:21: …hinc, in quantum tranquille agitur mundus, credentium gratia, in quantum perniciose inquietatur, blasphemantium poena est, securis per omnia fdelibus Christianis quibus aut aeternae vitae requies in tuto aut etiam huius in lucro est… 6 2.3.5, 1:89: …intellegant hi qui insipienter utique de temporibus Christianis murmurant… 7 2.3.7, 1:89: quoniam ibi in rege libidinum turpitudo punita, hic Christianae religionis continentissima aequitas in rege servata est; ibi absque religionis reverentia

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8

9

10 11 12 13

14 15

16 17 18

19 20 21

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aviditatem voluptatis licentia furoris implevit, hic et Christiani fuere qui parcerent, et Christiani quibus parcerent, et Christiani propter quorum memoriam et in quorum memoria parceretur. For a full discussion of Orosius’s use of the destruction of Sodom to demonstrate punishment of immorality and sexual corruption by a wrathful God, see Eoghan Ahern, ‘The Sin of Sodom in Late Antiquity’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 2 (2018): 209–33. Orosius makes reference to the circus rather than to gladiatorial spectacles in order to pun on ‘circuses’ and ‘swords’, circenses and enses. Circus games were associated with imperial victory, and Orosius’s emphasis on the circus could also be a pacifstic judgement on Rome’s martial hegemony and success. Juvenal, Satires 10.81. Orosius’s apologetic approach to compare past and present events is specifcally discussed in Chapter 4, 107–113. Fear, Orosius, 108n189. See Stephen J. Harris, Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature (London: Routledge, 2003), 98–100, for discussion of the Gallic and Gothic sacks. The impact of the sack is contested in modern as well as ancient receptions. For further discussion, see Peter Van Nuffelen, ‘Not Much Happened: 410 and All That’, Journal of Roman Studies 105 (2015): 322–9. For the sack within a wider historiographical context, see Pablo C. Díaz, ‘Crisis, Transition, Transformation: The End of the Roman World and the Usefulness of Useless Categories’, in Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate, ed. by Rita Lizzi Testa (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 15–37. See Livy, Ab urbe condita 5.47 and 5.40, respectively. Olympiodorus of Thebes’s account from the early ffth century survives in fragments. For a similar observation, see Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 192: ‘No single source lays out for us in one clear sequence everything leading up to this momentous event [the sack of Rome], let alone explores their underlying cause. In part, this is testimony to its complexity. The sack of Rome was an end product of an interaction between multiple protagonists that no contemporary historian – none, at least, whose work has survived – was able to understand in its entirety.’ 7.39.15, 3:116: Tertia die barbari quam ingressi Vrbem fuerant sponte discedunt, facto quidem aliquantarum aedium incendio… Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilisation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 22. For an analysis of the role of St Peter’s Basilica in late antique Rome, see Paolo Liverani, ‘Saint Peter’s and the City of Rome between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Story (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 21–34. Augustine, De civitate Dei 1.7. Augustine, De civitate Dei 1.7. 7.40.2, 3:117–18: In ea inruptione Placidia, Theodosii principis flia, Arcadii et Honorii imperatorum soror, ab Athaulfo, Alarici propinquo, capta atque in uxorem adsumpta, quasi eam divino iudicio velut speciale pignus obsidem Roma tradiderit, ita iuncta potentissimi barbari regis coniugio multo reipublicae commodo fuit. On Placidia’s willingness or coercion, see Hagith S. Sivan, Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 12. For a more detailed analysis, see Victoria Leonard, ‘Galla Placidia as “Human Gold”:

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24 25

26

27 28 29 30

31 32

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Consent and Autonomy in the Early Fifth Century West’, Gender and History 31, no. 2 (2019): 334–52. 7.39.8–10, 3:115: Itaque magno spectaculo omnium disposita per singulos singula et super capita elata palam aurea atque argentea vasa portantur; exertis undique ad defensionem gladiis pia pompa munitur; hymnum Deo Romanis barbarisque concinentibus publice canitur; personat late in excidio Vrbis salutis tuba omnesque etiam in abditis latentes invitat ac pulsat; concurrunt undique ad vasa Petri vasa Christi… A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 42. Jerome, Epistula 127 to Principia. All quotations are taken from this letter, chapters 13–14, trans. by Stefan Rebenich. For Principia, see Charles Pietri, Luce Pietri, Janine Desmulliez, Christiane Fraisse-Coué, Élisabeth Paoli-Lafaye, and Claire Sotinel, Prosopographie de l’Italie chrétienne (313-604), vol. 2 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000), ‘Principia’, 1825; J. R. Martindale, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, A.D. 395-527 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), ‘Principia 2’, 904. For Marcella, see Pietri et al., Prosopographie, ‘Marcella 1’, 1357–62. A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1, A.D. 260-395 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), ‘Marcella 2’, 542–3. For a general introduction to Jerome’s letter collection, see Andrew Cain, ‘The Letter Collections of Jerome of Stridon’, in Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide, ed. by Cristiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin, and Edward J. Watts (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 221–38. Orosius appears to record the oral transmission of information from Jerome at 7.43.4, 3:128. For discussion of this passage, see Guy Halsall, ‘Funny Foreigners: Laughing with the Barbarians in Late Antiquity’, in Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Guy Halsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 100–2. For a modern biography of Marcella, see Silvia Letsch-Brunner, Marcella – discipula et magistra: auf den Spuren einer römischen Christin des 4. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998). The preservation of the vessels of St Peter is noted by Cassiodorus in a letter written in 536 CE. Cassiodorus, Variae 12.20.4. 7.39.8, 3:115: …magno spectaculo omnium disposita per singulos singula et super capita elata palam aurea atque argentea vasa portantur. See further Andrew Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 83; 93: ‘Jerome sculpts her [Marcella] into his alter ego… Jerome’s literary compartmentalization of her…was a bold move to assert his intellectual and spiritual proprietorship over a woman who in real life had her own mind and was anything but a meek and submissive devotee. And this was while she was alive. When Marcella died, Jerome made sure that posterity would remember her for all time – but wholly on his terms, as his devoted protégée.’ See also Andrew Cain, ‘Rethinking Jerome’s Portraits of Holy Women’, in Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings and Legacy, ed. by Andrew Cain and Josef Lössl (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 57. Mark Vessey has argued that Jerome used his correspondence with Marcella to portray himself as the next Origen. Mark Vessey, ‘Jerome’s Origen: The Making of a Christian Literary Persona’, Studia Patristica 28 (1993): 135–45. For Sozomen and the sack, see Walter Emil Kaegi, Byzantium and the Decline of the Roman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 179–87. Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.11.

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33 For the infuence of Orosius’s version of the sack in later centuries, see Harris, Race and Ethnicity, 97–100. 34 Orosius is also playing on the similarly apocalyptic analogy of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13:25–43: ‘Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with the fre, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all cause of sin and all evildoers and they will throw them into the furnace of fre…’ 35 Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 8.1.5; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.69; Pliny, Historia Naturalis 28.12; Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.16. 36 Fear, Orosius, 407n493: ‘Given that he [Orosius] wrote the Histories in Africa, the Donatist controversy that centred on what was the appropriate response by Christians to persecution, and which was still a live issue in the region, may also have been in his mind.’

Bibliography

Works by Paulus Orosius Historia adversus paganos Paulus Orosius, Historiae adversus paganos, Pauli Orosii Historiarum adversum Paganos libri VII, ed. by Karl Zangemeister, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 5 (Vienna: C. Geroldi Filium Bibliopolam Academiae, 1882) ———, Seven Books of History against the Pagans: The Apology of Paulus Orosius, trans. by Irving Woodworth Raymond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936) ———, Paulus Orosius: The Seven Books of History against the Pagans, trans. by Roy J. Deferrari (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1964) ———, Le Storie contro i pagani, trans. by Adolf Lippold and Aldo Bartalucci, 2 vols (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1976) ———, Historias, trans. by Eustaquio Sánchez Salor, 2 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 1982) ———, Orose: Histoires (Contre les païens), ed. and trans. by Marie-Pierre ArnaudLindet, 3 vols (Paris: Budé, 1990) ———, História apologética: o livro 7 das histórias contra os pagãos e outros excertos, trans. by Paolo Farmhouse Alberto and Rodrigo Furtado (Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2000) ———, Kitāb Hurūšiyūš: traducción árabe de las ‘Historiae adversus paganos’ de Orosio, ed. by Mayte Penelas (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científcas, Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 2001) ———, Historias contra los paganos: versión aragonesa patrocinada por Juan Hernández De Heredia, ed. by Angeles Romero Cambrón and Ignacio J. García Pinilla (Spain: Larumbe Textos Aragoneses, 2008) ———, Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans, trans. by A. T. Fear (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010) Historiae adversus paganos: Old English version Alfred, The Anglo-Saxon Version, from the Historian Orosius. By Ælfred the Great. Together with an English Translation from the Anglo-Saxon, trans. by Daniel Barrington (London: printed by W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, and sold by S. Baker and G. Leigh, T. Payne, and B. White, 1773)

148 Bibliography ———, The Old English Orosius, ed. and trans. by Janet Bately (London: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 1980) ———, The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius, ed. and trans. by Malcolm R. Godden (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016) Liber apologeticus Paulus Orosius, Liber apologeticus contra pelagium de arbitrii libertate, ed. Karl Zangemeister, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 5 (Vienna: C. Geroldi Filium Bibliopolam Academiae, 1882) ———, ‘Book in Defense against the Pelagians’, in The Fathers of the Church: Iberian Fathers, vol. 3, Pacian of Barcelona and Orosius of Braga, trans. by Craig L. Hanson (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999) Commonitorium Paulus Orosius, Commonitorium de errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarum, ed. by Georg Schepps, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 18 (Vienna: F. Tempsky 1889), 149–57 ———, ‘Inquiry or Memorandum to Augustine on the Error of the Priscillianists and Origenists’, in The Fathers of the Church: Iberian Fathers, vol. 3, Pacian of Barcelona and Orosius of Braga, trans. by Craig L. Hanson (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999)

Texts and translations Ambrose, Illuminans altissimus, in Hymnes, ed. by Jacques Fontaine (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992), 335–59 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, Ammiani Marcellini Rerum gestarum libri qui supersunt, 2 vols, ed. by V. Gardthausen (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967) ———, The Later Roman Empire (AD 354–378), trans. by Walter Hamilton (London: Penguin, 1986) Aponius, In canticum canticorum expositio, Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques, 3 vols, ed. by Bernard de Vregille and Louis Neyrand (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997–8) Arnobius, Adversus gentes/Adversus nationes, The Seven Books of Arnobius Adversus gentes, trans. by A. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1871) Augustine, Sermones 200 and 202, ed. by Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina 38 (Paris: Migne, 1841), cols. 1028–35 ———, Epistula 166 ad Hieronymum, S. Aureli Augustini Hipponiensis Episcopi Epistulae, vol. 3, Ep. 124–184, ed. by Alois Goldbacher, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, 1904) ———, De civitate Dei, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De civitate Dei libri XXII, 2 vols, ed. by Bernhard Dombart. Bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum et romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1905–8) ———, Saint Augustine: Letters, vol. 4, trans. by Wilfrid Parsons (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1955)

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abraham xviii, xxn25, 51–4, 63–4, 77n122, 86, 88 Aeneas 25, 110 Africa 34, 55–8, 119 Agostino Dati 38 Alaric xvi, 60, 131, 135–8 Alexander the Great and the Alexander Romance 2, 22, 23; see also Macedonian empire Amazons 22, 95n2 Ammianus Marcellinus xv, xvii, xix, 2, 4, 28, 29 apologetics, apology 5, 10, 19, 24, 37; argument 30, 35–6, 50, 56, 60, 64, 68, 119, 129, 130, 133; and audience 28–9, 32–3; and historiography 23, 24, 88, 92–5, 133; Orosius’s objectives 20, 22, 25, 31, 79, 106, 108, 117; and reception 4; and sack of Rome 410 CE xv, 134–5, 142; see also polemic, polemical Aponius 86, 100n59 Arcadius (emperor) 136 Arnobius of Sicca 2 Asia 55 Assyria, Assyrian empire 18, 22, 27, 51, 52, 56–8, 63 Athanasius of Alexandria xvii Athaulf xvi, 62, 136 Augustine of Hippo: and classical reception 110; comparison with Orosius xv, 3, 8; and de Civitate dei 1, 6, 30–3, 58, 61, 107, 111, 113; and Epiphany 85–7, 89, 92; instruction to write the Historiae 9, 18, 20, 36, 44n94, 106; legacy 5, 8, 38, 107; relationship with Orosius 4, 7, 32, 117, 119; and sack of Rome 410 CE 135–6;

and theology 94, 107; and time 49; see also theology Augustus 22, 50–2, 78–95, 142; and Christianity 106, 115; and dating 27, 50, 53–4; and imperial succession 26; legacy 62, 66; and synchronization 38; and peace 57, 119; see also Octavian Babylon, Babylonian empire 48, 51, 57–61, 83, 93, 132; decline 130; and translation 55–6, 69 battle of Adrianople 107 Bede 2 the Bible: Book of Daniel 1, 56–7; Book of Exodus 140–1; Book of Revelation 141; Corinthians 141; Gospel of Luke 92; Gospel of Matthew 92, 141; Old Testament xviii, 18–19, 40n11, 52, 88, 104n108; Thessalonians 141; see also scripture booty see plunder Braulio of Zaragossa 8 breviaria 5, 10, 17, 20, 22–4, 37 Britain 118 Carolingian 8 Carthage 22, 26, 48, 56–7; and confict with Rome 35, 66, 112–13, 115–16; and human sacrifce 133; see also Punic wars Christendom xix, 16n63 Chronica urbis Romae 20 Chronicles, chronicle tradition xviii, 10, 18, 27, 68; and Creation 51; dismissal of 113; as a genre 5, 17, 20, 37 circus 132, 144n9 citizenship 91–5, 102–3n95, 119–20; citizens 35, 81, 116, 130, 135, 141–2

170 Index Constantine xvii, 28, 93 Council of Nicea xviii Creation xvii–xix, 55, 78; and historiography 5, 18–20, 22, 25, 28, 49–52, 60, 93, 130, 142; and sin 9; see also sin Dante 2, 7 Darius 23–4, 56 dating: consular dating 24, 26, 49, 63–7, 76n109, 79, 81, 83, 85, 112; dating by ab urbe condita 22, 24–7, 49, 51, 63–9, 89, 105; Olympiad dating 26, 49, 63, 66–7, 83 de imagine mundi 2 De punctandi genere 38 decline 5–6, 9; and empire 59, 61; fall of Rome 9; and ruin 33 Dionysius Exiguus 65, 68 disaster 46n113, 49, 50, 78, 106; and paganism 30, 97n28, 133; as a punishment for sin 9, 78, 82, 129–30; and sack of Rome 410 CE 107, 128–43; and war 113, 115, 120; see also sack of Rome 410 CE dominus 83–4, 93 the Epiphany 80–1, 84–90, 92–4, 99n48, 99–100n51, 58, 59 epitome xviii, 5, 10, 17, 20–3, 38, 64–5, 104n108, 105 Europe 8–9, 55, 113 Eusebius of Caesarea xvii–xviii, 28; and Christian historiography 1, 8, 18, 23, 37, 51, 78; Chronicon 49, 51, 52, 56, 63–4, 67, 82–3, 91; see also Jerome Eutropius 17–38, 40n35, 65–6 Festus 20, 22, 28 Florus 28 Fulgentius the mythographer 2 Galla Placidia (empress) 136 Gallic sack of Rome 390 BCE xvi, 23, 111, 133–4, 136, 139; see also Gaul Gaul 35, 98n29, 126n69, 133–4; see also Gallic sack of Rome 390 BCE Gelasius, Pope xix, 2 gender 95n2 Gennadius of Marseilles xix, 8 George Synkellos xviii Gibbon, Edward xv, 2–3 Gildas 2 Goths, Gothic xv–xvi, 59–60, 62, 96n10, 108, 120, 130–43

Gregory of Tours 2 heresy, heterodoxy xvii, 31, 94 Herodotus xvii, 55, 105 Hippolytus 18 Holy Land 32, 55, 138 Homer 94, 109–11 Honorius (emperor) 135–6 Honorius of Autun 2 Hydatius of Lemica xviii Ireland 118 Isidore of Seville 2, 8, 90 Italy 26, 35, 67, 110, 116, 131 Janus, gates of 53, 78–82, 85, 87, 89, 96n8, 102n90 Jerome xvi, xviii, 1, 85, 137–40; continuation of Eusebius’s Chronicon 51, 56, 63; relationship with Orosius 4, 32, 56, 145n26; see also Eusebius of Caesarea John Chrysostom xviii John Malalas xviii John of Salisbury 2 Jordanes 2, 33 Julian of Carthage 9 Julius Africanus 18 Julius Caesar 22, 27, 82–3, 88, 98n32, 126n69 Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus 20, 23, 28, 38, 50, 56, 64 Juvenal 132 Last Judgement xvi–xviii, 35, 38, 49, 61–2, 132, 141–3 Livy 28, 38, 76n109, 105–6, 108 Macedonian empire 57–8, 93; see also Alexander the Great and the Alexander Romance mappa mundi, Hereford Cathedral xix, 2, 3; see also ‘ormesta’ Marcella 137–40 the Nativity 65, 87–92, 94 Nero xvi, 136 Ninus 18, 27, 51–4, 63, 71n27, 72n33, 83, 86–8 Numa 76, 79, 80 Octavian 78, 83–4; see also Augustus Old English Historiae xix, 7, 16n63, 51, 70n16, 71n27 Olympiodorus of Thebes 19, 144n15

Index Origo Constantini 2, 11n11 ‘ormesta’ 33–4; see also mappa mundi, Hereford Cathedral orthodoxy xvii, 10, 94, 117, 139 Otto of Freising 2, 74n70, 106 pagan, paganism 64, 78–95; approach to the past 59, 63, 67, 108–13, 116, 120; associated with earlier periods 48; and audience 28–33, 79; polemic against xv–xvi, xix, 29, 37, 106, 128–43; and polytheism 31, 119–20, 135; predecessors 1, 2, 19–21, 49, 51–3, 57; and sack of Rome 410 CE 9, 108; see also disaster; sack of Rome 410 CE Parthia, Parthians 53, 80, 87 St Paul’s basilica 138 Paul the Deacon 2, 96n8 Paulinus of Nola 4 Paulinus of Pella 110, 123n41 Pelagius, Pelagian controversy 32 Peter Abelard 2 St Peter’s basilica 135, 138–9, 144n18 Petrarch 2, 5 Pliny 55 plunder 115, 135–6, 138; booty 114 polemic, polemical 10, 18, 49, 57, 64, 120; against paganism 30–1, 111, 132, 134; division of the Historiae 22, 80; as a genre 5, 17; and the past 118, 128; and pedagogy 108; and the sack of Rome 410 CE xv, 135; see also apologetic, apologetical Polybius xvii, 95, 114 Pomponius Mela 55 postcolonialism 35, 107, 113–20 princeps 78, 82, 84, 8n31, 99n43 Principia 137–9 protology 5, 10 Prosper of Aquitaine xviii pseudo-Dexter 34 pseudomorphosis 9 Punic wars 23, 26, 79, 80, 112–13, 116, 133; see also Carthage Quintilian 110 Radagaisus xv, 131, 134 Ranulf Higden 2 rape 109, 138–9

171

Renaissance 5 Romulus and Remus 25, 26, 67 Rufnus xvii sack of Rome 410 CE xv–xvi, 31, 59–60, 62, 96n10, 106–9, 111, 119–20, 128–43; and Gallic sack 23; and paganism 31; see also apologetic, apologetical; Augustine of Hippo; disaster; pagan, paganism; polemic, polemical scripture 1, 8, 60–1, 64, 67, 94, 109, 111; ignorance of 9, 129; superiority of 19, 52; see also the Bible Seneca 38 sin 1, 22, 60, 106, 129–4; and disaster 9, 130, 142–3; and judgement 49, 141; see also Creation; disaster slavery 36, 83, 91, 106, 109, 116–17 Socrates xvii, 28, 37 Sodom and Gomorrah 131–2 Sozomen xvii, 28, 37, 139 Spain 8, 35, 97n28, 99n48, 116 Stilicho xv; and Eucherius 134 stupidity 4, 6 Suetonius 83 Sulpicius Severus 18, 20, 28, 37, 55, 104n108 Tacitus xvii, xix, 99n43, 115–16 Tertullian 92–3 theatre 132; amphitheatre 31 Theodoret 28, 37 Theodosius (emperor) xxn22, 136 theology 5, 6, 9, 10, 17, 88, 142–3; and Augustine 107; political 78, 83, 85, 94, 117; retributivist 128 Theophanes xviii Thucydides xvii, 95, 105, 121n2 translatio imperii 56, 58, 73n55 trumpets 137, 139–41 Vallia xvi Varro 56, 63, 65 Velleius Paterculus 66, 90 vessels, sacred 134, 137–9, 145n28 Vestal virgins 95n2, 134, 141 Virgil 7, 94, 105, 110, 111, 123n41 zeal 32, 36, 80, 81