Mosaics of Time: The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD Volume I: A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from its Origins to the High Middle Ages by R. W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski (review)

Chronicles take centre stage in this illuminating introduction to a planned four-volume series, which promises to provide English translations along with historical and historiographical commentaries on the corpus of Latin chronicles dating from the first century bce to the sixth century ce.

The first chapter establishes parameters for the genre. Recognising that their classifications may not be accepted by their ‘insular’ colleagues within classical, late antique, Byzantine, and/or medieval studies, the authors, nevertheless, make a convincing case for their approach. From among a larger group of writings they contend are commonly misidentified as chronicles, R. W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski identify seven main sub-categories: annales (annals); chronica (chronicles); consularia; paschale chronicles; chronicle epitomes; chronographs; and brevaria.

The next chapter investigates the chronicle’s ancient roots. The reader is taken on a journey through time periods and cultures as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Periclean Greece, and Republican Rome, before winding up in the late fourth-century Roman Empire. By painstakingly sifting through a large corpus of literature, the commonly accepted idea that late Roman and medieval chronicles were a direct by-product of the Byzantine Eusebius and the fourth-century Christian Roman Empire is convincingly demolished.

Chapter 3 discusses Eusebius’s seminal work, Chronographia. Reiterating that Eusebius did not write in a vacuum, the authors explain why and how Eusebius and other chroniclers ‘privileged the past over the present’ (p. 100). Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the uniquely Roman genre of calendars and consularia. These chapters underline the Romans’ desire to have their local and imperial history in bite-size pieces. Tightly packed with details, consularia naturally provided chroniclers with vital material, though the end of the consulship itself in 541 caused the sub-genre’s eventual demise. The final chapter explores the diffusion and splintering of the ancient Mediterranean chronicle tradition across medieval Byzantium and the post-imperial West from seventh-century Visigothic Spain to twelfth-century Ireland.

Latin chronicles, Burgess and Kulikowski conclude, were never expected to compete with the more sophisticated Roman histories of, for instance, Livy, Tacitus, and Ammianus Marcellinus. Yet, by providing a medium that condensed wide sweeps of history into a more accessible form, chronicles filled an important intellectual niche for readers hungry for edifying tales from the near and ancient past.