La translatio imperii

The concept of translatio imperii which, in the most wellknown and widespread scheme in the ancient world, consists in the succession Assyrians - Medes - Persians - Macedonians, has by now become an interpretative category of world history. In the ancient world, the first traces of the translatio imperii, even if still only Asian, can be found in Herodotus. After then the Macedonian world is added during the Hellenistic period and, starting from the 2nd century BC, the power of Rome, often described by Roman historiography as the final and definitive one. Christian historiography too uses the scheme of the translatio imperii, joining the models of Greek-Roman and Jewish historiography, as we see in the Historiae adversus paganos by Paulus Orosius, written between 417 and 418 AD, in the hope (or better in the illusion) that the continuity of the Roman empire (by then become Christian) was still assured.