Succession of the kingdoms (1)

Text
Orosius, Historia adversus Paganos 2.1:
But if powers are the gift of God, all the more so are the kingdoms from which all other powers proceed. If the kingdoms, however, are rivals, it is better that some one kingdom be supreme, to which all the other kingdoms are subject. Thus, for instance, in the beginning there was the Babylonian kingdom, then the Macedonian, later the African, and finally the Roman, which endures even unto our own day. By the same inscrutable plan, four main kingdoms were preeminent in successive stages at the four cardinal points of the world, to wit, the Babylonian kingdom in the East, the Carthaginian in the South, the Macedonian in the North, and the Roman in the West. Between the first and the last, that is, between the Babylonian and the Roman, bridging as it were the space of years between an aged father and his little son, there intervened the brief period of supremacy of the African and Macedonian empires, circumstances rather than the law of inheritance determining their role as guardians and trustees.

Source (list of abbreviations)
Orosius, Historia adversus Paganos 2.1

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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