ORO SIUS, Paurus, a Spanish presbyter and historian, was born at Tarragona, and flourished in the early part of the 5th century. He went to Africa about 413 A.D., where he made the acquaintance of St. Augustine, and thence to Palestine, to study under St. Jerome, then living at Bethlehem. He finally settled down in Africa, but the date of his death is unknown. His chief work, the .Historiarunz adversus Paga nos Libri 7, begins with the creation and goes down to 417 A.D. It is apologetic in design, beimg intended to refute the notion then current among the pagans, that the misfortunes of the Roman empire and the wretchedness of the great masses were owing to the anger of the gods at the 'abandonment of their worship, and the profanation of their altars. The work is a trivial, inaccurate, uncritical miscellany of facts, culled from such second as Justin and Eutropius; the style is elegant, but also, as Bacon says, "watery." Yet it has obtained a place in literature from being a favorite text-book of
universal history during the middle ages, and had the honor of being translated into Anglo-Saxon by our own Alfred. Some manuscripts bear the puzzling title of Hormesta or Ornlista, conjectured by some to be a corruption of Or. M. ist.; that is, Orkii Historic (Orosius's History of the WOrld). The editio princeps of the work appeared at Vienna in 1471; the best edition is that of Havereamp (Lug. Bat. 41o, 1738). Other writings of Orosius are Libel. .Apologetieus de Arbitrii Lihertate, and anti-Pelagian treatise, Conzmo(iitorunt ad an explanation of the state of religious parties in Spain in his time. See ,timer's De Orosii Vita efusque Ilistariarunt Liters Septem adversus Pagans (Berl. 1844).