Sophia Scriptura

Church History 1.2.20

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

Summary: God punished them with floods, fires, famines, plagues, and wars to check the sickness of their souls.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:9

ἐφʼ οἷς τοῦτον ἑαυτοὺς ἄγουσι τὸν τρόπον κατακλυσμοῖς αὐτοὺς καὶ πυρπολήσεσιν ὥσπερ ἀγρίαν ὕλην κατὰ πάσης τῆς γῆς κεχυμένην θεὸς ὁ πάντων ἔφορος μετῄει, λιμοῖς τε συνεχέσι καὶ λοιμοῖς, πολέμοις τε αὖ καὶ κεραυνόν βολαῖς ἄνωθεν αὐτοὺς υπετέμνετο, ὥσπερ τινὰ δεινὴν καὶ χαλεπωτάτην νόσον ψυχῶν πικροτέροις ἀνέχων τοῖς κολαστηρίοις.

English · Claude translation

Because they conducted themselves in this way, God, the overseer of all, pursued them with floods and conflagrations, as if they were a wild forest spread over the whole earth; and with continual famines and plagues, and again with wars and thunderbolts from above, he cut them down, as if checking some terrible and most grievous disease of souls with harsher punishments.

About this passage

Source
Dindorf 4:9 · Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Eusebii Caesariensis Opera, vol. 4: Historiae ecclesiasticae libri I–X (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871) · Greek text: W. Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0
Text
As printed in Dindorf, Eusebii Opera 4. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.
Translation
Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Teubner, 1871); made independently of existing English translations.
Compare
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 1 (1890) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)
Scripture

Notes

Translation notes

  • The floods and conflagrations allude to the flood (Gen 6–8) and to Sodom (Gen 19).

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.2.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/1/2/20/).

Plain text
Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.2.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/1/2/20/).

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