Church History 9.8.14 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Only the Christians cared for the sick, buried the dead, and fed the hungry, so that pagans praised their God.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:432

μόνοι γοῦν ἐν τηλικαύτῃ κακῶν περιστάσει τὸ συμπαθὲς καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἔργοις αὐτοῖς ἐπιδεικνύμενοι, διὰ πάσης ἡμέρας οἱ μὲν τῇ τῶν θνησκόντων μυριάδες δʼ ἦσαν οἷς οὔτις ἦν ὁ ἐπιμελησόμενος) κηδείᾳ τε καὶ ταφῇ προσεκαρτέρουν, οἶ δὲ τῶν ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν πόλιν πρὸς τοῦ λιμοῦ κατατρυχομένων τὴν πληθὺν ὑπὸ μίαν σύνοψιν ἀθροίζοντες ἄρτους διένεμον τοῖς πᾶσιν, ὡς περιβόητον εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους καταστῆναι τὸ πρᾶγμα, θεόν τε τῶν Χριστιανῶν δοξάζειν, εὐσεβεῖς τε καὶ μόνους θεοσεβεῖς τούτους ἀληθῶς, πρὸς αὐτῶν ἐλεγχθέντας τῶν πραγμάτων, ὁμολογεῖν.

English · Claude translation

For they alone, in such a calamity, showed sympathy and humanity by their very deeds. All day long some of them persevered in caring for and burying the dying (for there were tens of thousands who had no one to care for them), while others gathered in one place the multitude of those throughout the whole city who were wasting away from hunger and distributed bread to them all. So the deed became famous among all people, and they glorified the God of the Christians and confessed that these alone were truly pious and God-fearing, convinced by the facts themselves.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:432 · 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

Ethics

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.8.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/8/14/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.8.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/8/14/).