Orosius, PAULUS, a Spanish presbyter and historian, was born at Tarragona, and flourished in the 5th century. He visited Augustine in 415, and presented to him his work written against the heresies of Priscillian and Origen. He went thence to Palestine to study under Jerome at Bethlehem. His chief work, the Historiarum adversus Paganos Libri vii., begins with the creation and goes down to 417 A.D. It is apologetic in design, intended as a complement to the great work of Augustine written to prove from historical evidence that the prevailing evils of the time were not due to Christianity. It is based on the chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome, and on Livy, Eutropius, Justin, Tacitus, and Suetonius; but the work is a trivial, inaccurate, uncritical miscellany of facts, although the style is elegant if watery, in Bacon's phrase. It was a favourite text-book of universal history during the middle ages, and had the honour of being translated into Anglo-Saxon by Alfred (ed. by Bosworth in 1851, and by H. Sweet from Lord Tollemache's 9th-century MS. 1883 et seq.). Some MSS. bear the puzzling title of Hormesta or Ormista, conjectured by some to be a corruption of Or. m. ista—i.e. Orosii mundi istoria, or perhaps Orosii miseriarum (mundi) istoria.
The editio princeps appeared at Vienna in 1471; the best edition is that by C. Zangemeister in Corpus Script. Eccles. Latin. (Vienna, 1882). The edition of Havercamp (1738) was reprinted in vol. ix. of Galland's Bib. Pat. (1773) and vol. xxxi. of Migne's Patrol. (1846); the history alone by Dr Brohm (Thorn, 1877). An earlier English translation (1773) was reprinted in Bohn's 'Antiquarian Library' (1853).