Orosius Sources
Fear (2010:15-16) described
Orosius' sources as follows:
The sources Orosius used were probably not great in number, though a specious lustre of wide reading comes from his secondary use of the fragments of authors found in the notes of Jerome’s Chronicle. His main source for Greek history is Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s Philippic History.83 Justin composed his epitome in the second or third century AD, while Trogus’s original work dates from the end of the first century BC. Livy, often at second hand via epitomes, the second-century historian Florus, and late fourth-century writer Eutropius form the main base of Orosius’s passages concerning the Roman Republic. In the Imperial period, Eutropius’s work becomes more prominent along with the now lost fourth century ‘History of the Emperors’ or Kaisergeschichte.84 Orosius also shows knowledge of Caesar, Sallust, Tacitus, and Suetonius. His approach to these sources was by no means naive. While at times he takes material verbatim or with very minor alterations, they are more often approached with a careful eye for selectivity. Instances of failed prophecy are seized upon as demonstrations of the folly of pagan religion,85 while pagan prophecies that seemingly come true are suppressed,86 as are accounts of successful pagan divine intervention.87 At times more open manipulation occurs. Leonidas’s speech to the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae is carefully edited to give it a sense quite different to the original found in Justin.88 Similarly, the sack of the Phoceans’ temples is portrayed as evidence of the impotence of the pagan gods, but Orosius’s source, Justin, presents it as divinely inspired punishment for the Phoceans’ earlier blasphemy.89 Later Orosius tells us that the consul Gurges was defeated after the ‘snake of Aesculapius’ was brought to Rome, leaving the reader to infer that there is a causal link between the two events. In Livy, however, who is Orosius’s source, the two events occur in the opposite order.90 Pagan sources are used to discredit the oracle of Ammon, and Mithridates’ final speech is also recruited to the cause of refuting paganism by a careful misinterpretation of its actual sense.91 This studied editing of the pagan past is intended to leave the reader feeling that Christianity’s critics are refuted by the very authors they would claim as their own.