Zosimus (historian)

1. Pope Zosimus (417-418)

2. Zosimus, a Greek historian of the 5th or 6th century A.D. whose personal dates are controverted. He wrote a history of the Roman Empire in the Greek language that stops abrubtly (at least in the manuscript that survives) in 410 before the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths. For the end of his period, 395-410, he is the most important surviving non-ecclesiastical source. Zosimus was a pagan and portrays the decline of the Empire as a result of the rejection of paganism in favor of Christianity.