Church History 8.14.15 · Sophia Scriptura

Greek text · Dindorf 4:375–376

μόνη γοῦν τῶν ἄλλων ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου μεμοιχευμένων Χριστιανὴ τῶν ἐπʼ Ἀλεξανδρείας ἐπισημοτάτη τε καὶ λαμπροτάτη τὴν ἐμπαθῆ καὶ ἀκόλαστον Μαξιμίνου ψυχὴν διʼ ἀνδρειοτάτου παραστήματος ὑπερεξενίκησεν, ἔνδοξος μὲν τἄλλα πλούτῳ τε καὶ γένει καὶ παιδείᾳ, πάντα γε μὴν δεύτερα σωφροσύνης τεθειμένη, ἣν καὶ πολλὰ λιπαρήσας κτεῖναι μὲν ἑτοίμως θνήσκειν ἔχουσαν οὐχ οἷός τε ἦν, τῆς ἐπιθυμίας μᾶλλον τοῦ θυμοῦ κατακρατούσης αὐτοῦ, φυγῇ δὲ ζημιώσας πάσης ἀφείλετο τῆς οὐσίας.

English · Claude translation

Of the others whom the tyrant tried to seduce, one Christian woman alone, among the most distinguished and illustrious women of Alexandria, overcame the passionate and licentious soul of Maximin by a most courageous steadfastness. She was renowned in other respects for wealth, family, and education, but she placed everything second to chastity. Though he pressed her often, he could not bring himself to kill her, ready as she was to die, for his lust overpowered his anger; so he punished her with exile and took away all her property.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:375–376 · 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)

Topics

Persecution, Ethics

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (line-break hyphen left in the digital text; wrong breathing in the digital text): ὐπερεξενίκησεν → ὑπερεξενίκησεν; ἔνδο- ξος → ἔνδοξος.

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.14.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/14/15/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.14.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/8/14/15/).