ZOSIMUS

A Greek historian who lived as a high officer of State at Constantinople in the second half of the 5th century A.D., and composed a work, distinguished for its intelligent and liberal views, on the fall of the Roman Empire. It is in six books: i, giving a sketch of the time from Augustus to Diocletian; ii-iv, a fuller account of events down to the division of the Empire by Theodosius the Great; v and vi treat in greater detail of the period from 395-410; the conclusion of book vi is probably wanting, as Zosimus had the intention of continuing the history up to his own time. He attributes the fall of the Empire in part to the overthrow of heathenism and the introduction of Christianity, with which, of course, he was not acquainted in its purest form, but only in the degenerate state into which it had sunk in the 4th century.