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Sources & method

Source basis: Each hosted writing names its date, translator, source link, and manuscript survival notes where available. Sources

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The library · Edition and sources

Origen: On First Principles

ANF historical edition · Translated text

Book I — Fragment from the First Book of the de Principiis.

Fragment from the First Book of the de Principiis.

Translated by Jerome in His Epistle to Avitus.

Quotation in the text

“It is an evidence of great negligence and sloth, that each one should fall down to such (a pitch of degradation), and be so emptied, as that, in coming to evil, he may be fastened to the gross body of irrational beasts of burden.”

Read in this edition: source locators and uncertainty marks are retained. Square brackets can mark gaps or editorial interventions; headings and supplied subtitles belong to the edition. Coverage and cautions

About this reading layout

Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.

These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.