Sophia Scriptura

Church History 9.8.6

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

Summary: People sold their children for food, sold all they had, or ate grass and poisonous plants and died.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:430

τινὲς μὲν οὖν τὰ ἑαυτῶν φίλτατα βραχυτάτης τροφῆς τοῖς εὐπορωτέροις ἀπεμπολᾶν ἠξίουν, ἄλλοι δὲ τὰς κτήσεις κατὰ βραχὺ διαπιπράσκοντες εἰς ἐσχάτην ἐνδείας ἀπορίαν ἤλαυνον· ἤδη δέ τινες σμικρὰ χόρτου διαμασώμενοι σπαράγματα, καί τινας ἀνέδην φθοροποιοὺς ἐσθίοντες πόας, τὴν τῶν σωμάτων ἔξιν λυμαινόμενοι διώλλυντο.

English · Claude translation

Some thought fit to sell their dearest ones to the wealthier for the smallest scrap of food; others, selling off their possessions little by little, were driven to the extreme of want; and some, chewing small wisps of hay and recklessly eating certain harmful plants, ruined their bodily health and perished.

About this passage

Source
Dindorf 4:430 · 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)

Notes

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (line-break hyphen left in the digital text): λυ- μαινόμενοι → λυμαινόμενοι.

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.8.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/8/6/).

Plain text
Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.8.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/8/6/).

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