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82 needed advocacy in the world. Alaric entered Rome in 410; and it was to meet the cry of those who would lay that catastrophe at the Church's doors that Augustine began the Civitas Dei. Soon after, an ardent young Spaniard named Orosius came on pilgrimage to the great doctor at Hippo, and finding favour in his eyes, was asked to write a profane history proving the abundance of calamities which had afflicted mankind before the time of Christ. So Orosius devoted some years (417–418) to the compilation of a universal chronicle, using Latin sources, and calling his work Seven Books of Histories "adversum paganos." Addressing Augustine in his prologue, he says:

Orosius's story of the four great Empires—Babylonian, Macedonian, African, and Roman—makes a red tale of carnage. He deemed "that such things should be commemorated, in order that with the secret of God's ineffable judgments partly laid open, those stupid murmurers at our Christian times should understand that the one God ordained the fortunes of Babylon in the beginning, and at the end those of Rome; understand also that it is through His clemency that we live, although wretchedly because of