Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/94

 Readings i,i European History Augustine's City of God. Orosius and his History directed against the Pagans. Salvian's Government of God. Apollinaris Sidonius and his letters. we are reduced to illustrate the partial narrative of Zosimus 1 by the obscure hints of fragments and chronicles, by the figurative style of poetry or panegyric, and by the precarious assistance of the ecclesiasti- cal writers who, in the heat of religious faction, are apt to despise the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation. Conscious of these disad- vantages, which will continue to involve a considerable portion of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, I shall proceed with doubtful and timorous steps." 2 Instigated by the capture of Rome by Alaric and the West Goths, ST. AUGUSTINE composed his famous work, The City of God, to prove that the disaster could not, as the pagans urged, be reasonably attributed to the anger of the heathen gods who had been deserted for the God of the Christians. OROSIUS, a disciple and ardent admirer of Augustine, undertook further to confound the pagans by reviewing the whole history of the past with the aim of showing that mankind had in all ages suffered from terrible calamities and disasters. Human trouble was no new thing ; so it was absurd, he maintained, to cast the blame for the dis- orders of the time upon the Christians and their religion. His Seven Books of History directed against the Pagans was one of the most popu- lar books of the Middle Ages and greatly affected later writers. The facts were, however, selected and presented with the purpose of proving his gloomy thesis, and only the latter chapters of the work, which closes with the year 417, have any historical value, for they relate to the writer's own time, about which little is known. There is a cheap and excellent edition of Orosius published by Teub- ner, 1889. The work is to be found in MIGNE, Patrologia Latina, Vol. XXXI, and, better, in the Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Lati- norum, Vol. V. A specimen has already been given (see pp. 28 sqq. above) of SALVIAN'S Eight Books on the Government of God, written about 450. This is not a history, nor an impartial description of the social conditions of the time, since the writer is tempted to paint them in too dark colors, and, conversely, to give too cheerful a view of the habits and conduct of the barbarians, whom he believed God had sent to punish the civilized world for its monstrous iniquities. APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS, an amiable contemporary of Salvian's, took a much less gloomy view of the situation than he. The ancestors of 1 See above, p. 42, note. 2 Bury's edition, Vol. Ill, p. 122. An amusing but none the less valuable denunciation of the s-mrc >s for the period of the invasions may be found in HODGKIN, Italy and her Invaders, Vol. II, pp. 299-303.