XL.
Orosius, presbyter of Spanish origin, an eloquent man and learned in history, wrote seven books against those enemies of the Christians who say that the decay of the Roman Republic was caused by the Christian religion. In these, rehearsing the calamities, miseries, and war disturbances of the almost whole world from its very beginning, he shows that the Roman Empire owed to the Christian religion its undeserved continuance and the state of peace which it enjoyed for the worship of God.
In the first book, he reasonably described: the position of the world situated between the stream of Oceanus and the banks of the Danube river, the location of the places, names, and the number and customs of [various] people, the characteristics of different regions, the beginnings of wars, and the origins of tyrannies founded on the blood of neighbours.
This is the Orosius who, returning from Jerome to whom he was sent by Augustine in order to learn the nature of the soul, was the first to bring to the West relics of the blessed Stephen the first martyr then recently found. He [i.e. Orosius] flourished almost at the end of the reign of the emperor Honorius.
(trans. by E. Cushing Richardson, changed by J. Szafranowski)