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Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series:
LESLIE S.B. MACCOULL

Documenting Christianity in Egypt, Sixth to Fourteenth Centuries
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Church and Society in Late Antique Italy and Beyond
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Studies on the Cult of Relics in Byzantium up to 1204
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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES
Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins:

Historiography and History in the
Later Roman Empire
R.W. Burgess
Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins:

Historiography and History in the
Later Roman Empire
First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
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This edition © 2011 by R.W. Burgess
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Burgess, R. W. (Richard W.)
Chronicles, consuls, and coins : historiography and history in the later Roman
Empire.
– (Variorum collected studies series)
1. Rome – History – Empire, 284–476 – Historiography.
2. Rome – History – Empire, 284–476 – Sources.
I. Title II. Series
937'.08–dc22
ISBN 978–1–4094–2820–6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011925098
ISBN 9781409428206 (hbk)
VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS984

CONTENTS
Introduction vii
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
HISTORIOGRAPHY
I The dates and editions of Eusebius’ Chronici canones

and Historia ecclesiastica 471–504
Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 48, 1997
II A chronological prolegomenon to reconstructing

Eusebius’ Chronici canones: the evidence of
Ps-Dionysius (the Zuqnin Chronicle) 29–38
Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 6, 2006
III Jerome explained: an introduction to his Chronicle

and a guide to its use 1–32
Ancient History Bulletin 16, 2002
IV Jerome and the Kaisergeschichte 349–369

Historia 44, 1995
V On the date of the Kaisergeschichte 111–128

Classical Philology 90, 1995
VI Principes cum tyrannis: two studies on the

Kaisergeschichte and its tradition 491–500
Classical Quarterly 43, 1993
VII A common source for Jerome, Eutropius, Festus,

Ammianus, and the Epitome de Caesaribus between
358 and 378, along with further thoughts on the date
and nature of the Kaisergeschichte 166–192
vi CONTENTS
VIII Eutropius v.c. magister memoriae? 76–81

HISTORY
IX Ѡ͔͎͒Ӊ͋LO̯͎͍ҽ͇͍͐͑̓͋? The location and

circumstances of Constantine’s death 153–161
Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 50, 1999
X The summer of blood: the ‘great massacre’ of 337

and the promotion of the sons of Constantine 5–51
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62, 2008
XI The Passio S. Artemii, Philostorgius, and the dates

of the invention and translations of the relics of
Sts Andrew and Luke 5–36
Analecta Bollandiana 121, 2003
XII The accession of Marcian in the light of Chalcedonian

apologetic and monophysite polemic 47–68
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 86/87, 1993/1994
XIII The third regnal year of Eparchius Avitus: a reply 335–345

XIV Quinquennial vota and the imperial consulship in the

IRXUWKDQG¿IWKFHQWXULHV± ±SODWHV
Numismatic Chronicle 148, 1988
XV ‘Non duo Antonini sed duo Augusti’: the consuls of

161 and the origins and traditions of the Latin
consular fasti of the Roman Empire 259–290
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 132, 2000
Supplementary Notes 1–10
Index 1–5
This volume contains xiv + 354 pages

INTRODUCTION
The papers collected in this volume extend from my second published paper
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them, papers XII and XIV, did not arise out of my main research interest,
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&ODUHQGRQ3UHVVLQ WKDWSDSHU;,,,DQGDOOP\ODWHUZRUNKDVHYROYHGLQ
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led to the Descriptio consulum ZKLFK ZDV WKHQ LQFOXGHG ZLWK P\
edition of Hydatius, and the Descriptio then led to other consularia ZKHQFH
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GLI¿FXOWLHVDWDumbarton Oaks Papers.
viii INTRODUCTION
The central focus of the papers collected in this volume is the sources for
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and breviaria whose texts are fundamental for our reconstruction of the
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VR (XVHELXV RI &DHVDUHD -HURPH WKH ORVW Kaisergeschichte DQG (XWURSLXV
,QWKLVVHFWLRQWKHJRDOLQHDFKFDVHLVDVSHFL¿FDWWHPSWWRFRPHWRDEHWWHU
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texts.
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ranging in time from the death of Constantine in 337 to the vicennalia of
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from a better understanding of the literary sources – particularly chronicles
and consularia±DQXQGHUVWDQGLQJRIWKHHYROXWLRQRIKLVWRULFDODFFRXQWVRYHU
WLPH RU WKH HPSOR\PHQW RI VRXUFHV WKDW DUH HLWKHU QHZ RU XQXVXDO LQ WKHVH
particular contexts: consular fastiFRLQVSDS\ULDQGLWLQHUDULHV
R.W. BURGESS
Ciuitate Ottauiense
V id. Ian. MMXI
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions,

journals and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers
included in this volume: Oxford University Press (for Papers I and IX); the
Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, University of Toronto (II); Ancient
History Bulletin, Calgary (III); Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart (IV); University
of Chicago Press (V, VII, VIII, XIII); Cambridge University Press (VI);
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Washington DC (X); the Société des Bollandistes
(Analecta Bollandiana), Brussels (XI); Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., Berlin
(XII); the Royal Numismatic Society (Numismatic Chronicle) (XIV); and Dr
Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn (XV).
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies
Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid
confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been
referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever
possible.
Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as
listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in
the index entries.
Asterisks in the margins are to alert the reader to additional information
supplied at the end of the volume in the Supplementary Notes.
ABBREVIATIONS
AB Analecta Bollandiana
ACOec Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Leipzig and Berlin,
1914–.
AE/AEpigr L’Année épigraphique
AJAH American Journal of Ancient History
AJPh American Journal of Philology
ANSMN American Numismatic Society Museum Notes
BASP Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
BFLM Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Mulhouse
BHAC Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
BJ Bonner Jahrbücher
BullBudé Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé
Byz Byzantion
ByzF Byzantinische Forschungen
BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
CB The Classical Bulletin
CCSL Corpus Christianorum series Latina. Turnholt, 1953–.
Chron. min. Chronica minora (= MGH: AA vols. 9, 11, and 13)
CIL Th. Mommsen, et al. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.
Berlin, 1869–.
CLRE Roger S. Bagnall, Alan Cameron, Seth R. Schwartz, and
Klaas A. Worp. Consuls of the Later Roman Empire. Atlanta,
1987.
CP/CPh Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CR Classical Review
CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium. Paris and
Louvain, 1903–.
CSHB Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae. Bonn, 1828–1897.
CTh Th. Mommsen and P. M. Meyer. Theodosiani Libri XVI cum
constitutionibus Sirmondianis. Berlin, 1905.
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
EMC/CV Echos du monde classique/Classical Views
xii ABBREVIATIONS
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten

Jahrhunderte. Leipzig and Berlin, 1897–.
GOTR Greek Orthodox Theological Review
GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
HE Historia ecclesiastica
HCPh/HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
HLL R. Herzog and P.L. Schmidt (eds). Handbuch der
lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Munich, 1989–.
HTR Harvard Theological Review
ICUR Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Angelo Silvagni, and Antonio
Ferrua. Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae septimo
saeculo antiquiores. Nova series. Rome, 1922–.
ILS Hermann Dessau (ed.). Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae.
Berlin, 1892–1916
Inscr. Ital. Inscriptiones Italiae. Rome, 1931–.
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
JIAN Journal international d’archéologie numismatique
JLA Journal of Late Antiquity
JÖBG Jahrbuch der österreichischen byzantinischen Gesellschaft
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JTS/JThS Journal of Theological Studies
LRBC R.A.G. Carson, P.V. Hill, and J.P.C. Kent. Late Roman
Bronze Coinage. London, 1978.
LSJ 9 Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones
(eds.). A Greek English Lexicon.9 Oxford, 1940.
MGH: AA Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi.
Berlin, 1877–1919.
MGH: SSRLang Monumenta Germaniae historica: Scriptores rerum
Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI–IX. Berlin, 1878.
MGH: SSRM Monumenta Germaniae historica: Scriptores rerum
Merovingicarum. Berlin, 1885–1951.
NC Numismatic Chronicle
NNÅ Nordisk Numismatisk Årsskrift
NNM Numismatic Notes and Monographs
NZ Numismatische Zeitschrift
PBA Proceedings of the British Academy
PG Patrologia graeca
PIR Elimar Klebs, et al. Prosopographia imperii romani saec I.
II. III.1 and 2 Berlin, 1897–.
PL Patrologia latina
ABBREVIATIONS xiii
PLRE The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vols. 1 and

2. Cambridge, 1971–1980.
PO Patrologia orientalia
RBN Revue belge de numismatique
RE Georg Wissowa et al. (eds). Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1894–1963.
REA Revue des études anciennes
RendLinc Atti dell’accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti, Classe
GLVFLHQ]HPRUDOLVWRULFKHH¿ORORJLFKH
RFIC 5LYLVWDGL¿ORORJLDHGLLVWUX]LRQHFODVVLFD
RhM/RM Rheinische Museum für Philologie
RIC H. Mattingly et al. Roman Imperial Coinage. London, 1923–.
RIN 5LYLVWDLWDOLDQDGLQXPLVPDWLFDHVFLHQ]HDI¿QL
RN Revue numismatique
RSN Revue suisse de numismatique
TAPA/TAPhA Transactions of the American Philological Association
TM Travaux et mémoires
TTH Translated Texts for Historians. Liverpool, 1985–.
TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen
Literatur. Leipzig and Berlin, 1883–.
ZPapEpig/ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
ZRVI Zborknik radova Vizantinoškog instituta
I
THE DATES AND EDITIONS OF EUSEBIUS'

CHRONIC! CANONES AND HISTORIA
ECCLESIASTICA
THE earliest evidence we have for the existence of Eusebius' now
lost XpovtKoi Kav6vEs (Chronici canones or Chronological Tables)
comes from other works of Eusebius: the Historia ecclesiastica
(HE) (1.1.6), the first edition of which is variously dated between
pre-293 and 3 I 3 (see below); the preface to book six of the General
Elementary Introduction, of which four books (6-9)
survive under the title Eclogae propheticae (PG 22. 1023A), dated
303/3 12; 1 and the Praeparatio Evangelica ( 10.9. II), dated
c.314/318. This early evidence demonstrates that there must have
been an edition earlier than the one of 325, where the universal
testimony of the surviving witnesses places its conclusion. 2 Until
now, there has been no solid evidence to suggest when any such
putative first edition may have been produced and consequently
there has been much debate and discussion.
The following are cited by short title only:

Barnes, 'Editions'= T. D. Barnes, 'The Editions of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical
History', GRBS 21 (198o), 191-20I.
Barnes, C and E=T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.,
1981).
Louth, 'Date'=Andrcw Louth, 'The Date of Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica',
JTS, NS, 41 (1990), III-2J.
1 The tenth and last book of the General Elementary Introduction-surviving as
the Commentary on Luke-must date after 309; see D. S. Wallace-Hadrill,

'Eusebius of Caesarea's Commentary on Luke: Its Origin and Early History', HTR
67 (1974), 6J.
2 See Alden A. Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek
Chronographic Tradition (Lewisburg, PA, 1979), 38, 61, 62-63, 75· For the conclu-
sion in year twenty of Constantine (=AD 325), see e.g. Eusebius, Chronographia
(Greek: John Anthony Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e Codd. Manuscriptis Bibliothecae
Regiae Parisiensis, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1839; repr. Hildesheim, 1967), 160.8-9;
Armenian translation: Josef Karst (ed.), Eusebius Werke 5: Die Chronik aus dem
Armenischen Obersetzt mit textkritischem Commentar (GCS 20; Leipzig, 191 1),
62.3-5); Chronici canones (Latin translation of Jerome: Rudolf Helm (ed.), Eusebius
Werke 7: Die Chronik des Hieronymus 3 (GCS 47; Berlin, 1984)), 6.17-8, 231f;
Chronicon miscellaneum ad annum Domini 724 pertinens (Syriae epitome of the
Canones; CSCO 4, Chron. min. 2: Scriptores Syri, series 3, tomus 4, versio, by
J.-B. Chabot), 100.22, 32-3; Samuel Aniensis, Summarium temporum, PG 19.665;
Chronicon Paschale (Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), CSHB 16 (Bonn, 1832)) s.a. 325,
pp. 526.5-6; 527.2-5; and James of Edessa, Chronicon (Syriac continuation of
Eusebius; CSCO 6, Chron. min. 3: SS series 3, tomus 4, versio, by E. W. Brooks),
199, 200, 203, 204, 205, 209, 214.
I
472
I
The communis opinio is that the first edition was completed in
or around 303. 3 This view was first popularized by an influential
article in Pauly-Wissowa by Eduard Schwartz, who believed that
the Canones had to date before the Eclogae propheticae, but did
not believe that Eusebius could have written such a work during
the persecution. He therefore stated that Eusebius had written it
or at least collected his materials before 303. 4 The recent currency
of 303, however, chiefly depends on an article written by D. S.
Wallace-Hadrill in 1955, which was based on the earlier hypo-
theses of Joseph Karst, editor of the Armenian translation of the
Canones. 5 Wallace-Hadrill accepted Karst's argument that the
Armenian translation represented the first edition of this work
and that the terminal date of the Armenian Canones, Year 16
of Diocletian ( = 300), was thus the concluding date of the first
edition. He also attempted to buttress Karst's hypothesis with
other evidence for a visible 'joint' between the first and second
editions. He cites from Jerome's translation three additions and
alterations to the Canones that '[cluster] round the year 303'
(pp. 249-50). 6 However, though these probably are all later addi-
tions and alterations, there is no reason why such 'rewriting in
3 For this date, see, for example, Otto Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altkirchlichen
Literatur 3 (Freiburg, I923), 248-49; Kirsopp Lake, Eusebius. The Ecclesiastical

History I (Loeb Classical Library; New York, I926), xvii; Johannes Quasten,
Patrology 3 (Utrecht/Antwerp, I96o), 3 I2; Berthold Altaner, Patrology (New York,
I96I), 264; Mosshammer (cit. n. 2), p. 32; R. M. Grant, Eusebius as Church
Historian (Oxford, I98o), I; Johannes Karayannopulos and Gunter WeiB,
Quellenkunde zur Geschichte von Byzanz (324-I453) 2 (Wiesbaden, I982), 244;
Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon (London, I983), 5; W. H. C. Frend,
The Rise of Christianity (London, I984), 457, 477, 478; Robin Lane Fox, Pagans
and Christians (London, I986), 6o6; C. Curti in Angelo Di Berardino (ed.),
Encyclopedia of the Early Church I (New York, I992), 299; and others cited by
Barnes in 'Editions', p. I93, and C and E, p. 34I n. 67.
4 RE 6. I (I907), p. I376.
5 D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, 'The Eusebian Chronicle: The Extent and Date of
Composition of its Early Editions', JTS 6 (I955), 248-53 (repeated in his Eusebius
of Caesarea (London, I96o), 43) and Karst (cit. n. 2), pp. xxx-xxxiii.
6 These are the notice concerning Constantine's accession in the fourth year of
the persecution ( = 306) under Year I9 ( = 303), the alteration of the month of the
inception of the persecution from April to March under Year I9, and the reference
to the martyrdom of Peter of Alexandria in the ninth year of the persecution
(t25 November 3II) under Year I9 (though Wallace-Hadrill did not know that
this is Jerome's error: in Eusebius' original it was dated to Year I7. For a recon-
* struction of Eusebius' original text for these years, see my paper 'The Chronici
canones of Eusebius of Caesarea: Chronology and Content, AD 282-325', which is
nearing completion. These entries may appear in Year I9 of Diocletian in Jerome,
but only one actually has anything to do with 303.
I
CHRONIC! CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 473

the light of later knowledge' could or should have occurred only
at the end of the first edition. The key point is, in fact, that they
all relate to later knowledge concerning the persecution, which
began in 303. These entries, therefore, have no bearing on the
date of the first edition.
Wallace-Hadrill also notes that Eusebius' list of the bishops of
apostolic sees stops in 302 (p. 250). This is true, but apart from
Rome (for which information would have been difficult for
Eusebius to obtain during the persecution), no further bishops
were ordained in Antioch, Jerusalem, or Alexandria until about
312/3 (Vitalis, Macarius, and Achillas, respectively). Following
Wallace-Hadrill's argument any date as late as 312/3 is therefore
possible. But the episcopal lists in both the Canones and the HE
purposely cease with the beginning of the persecution, not the
end of the first edition of the Canones. Eusebius explicitly says
this in the HE (7.32.32 and 8 pref.), though he does not explain
why. For some reason apostolic succession was no longer import-
ant during the persecution or in its aftermath. If the end of the
list simply marked the end of the first edition, there is no reason
why Eusebius should not have continued the list in the later
editions of both works, especially the HE. Once again, the crux
is the beginning of the persecution, not the end of the first edition.
Finally, Wallace-Hadrill points to twelve differences between
the Armenian translation and Jerome's translation (pp. 251-52),
claiming that these arise because each translation represents a
distinct edition-the Armenian the first edition, Jerome's Latin
the third edition. The argument is irrelevant, however, since none
of these twelve items relates to 303. It is further flawed by the
fact that the Armenian translation is not a different edition from
Jerome's and is not complete as Karst believed; it is simply a
defective translation of a composite Armenian/Syriac version of
the same 325 edition as Jerome's.' The differences that Wallace-
7 In the Armenian translation of the Chronographia, which is Eusebius' lengthy
introduction to his sources and establishment of the individual chronologies for

the Canones, there is a note that mentions the twentieth year of Constantine (Karst
(cit. n. 2), p. 62.3-5, which is the same as the Greek fragment printed by Cramer
(cit. n. 2), p. 160.8-9) and an identical Armenian translation was used by Samuel
Aniensis in the late-twelfth century for his Armenian chronicle and he records the
conclusion of Eusebius' chronicle in 325 as well (PG 19.665). Furthermore, the last
entry in the Armenian translation (on Hermon of Jerusalem) appeared under Year
17 of Diocletian in Eusebius' Greek original (see my paper cited in n. 6, above)
and has mistakenly slipped back a year, thus avoiding the oblivion shared by the
rest of the text after Year 16. Karst claimed that the Armenian translation had
been contaminated by the edition of 325. See Mosshammer (cit. n. 2),
pp. 59-60, 75·
I
474
Hadrill points out (and many others that he does not mention)
arise simply because the Armenian version is not a complete or
accurate translation; its various translators and redactors omitted
and altered textual material and chronological markers through
wilful error, carelessness, or lack of interest (for two examples,
see nn. 19 and 27, below). Unfortunately, on occasion Jerome
made mistakes as well. 8
The major problem with Wallace-Hadrill's argument, however,
is that he claims to accept Karst's conclusions as the foundation
of his own argument, yet redefines them: Karst's hypothesis was
that the first edition ended in Year 16 of Diocletian, that is 300,
but Wallace-Hadrill changes this to 303 (which for some reason
he insists on labelling 'Diocl. 18', when it is in fact 'Diocl. 19').
Karst's entire case rested on the supposition that the Armenian
translation was complete. Wallace-Hadrill abandons that supposi-
tion, stating that the first edition 'did not extend far beyond the
mutilated end of the Armenian text' (p. 250), but in so doing he
unwittingly abandons Karst's entire hypothesis and hence the
foundation of his own: if the Armenian translation does not end
in 300, the evidence shows that it must have concluded in 325
and it is consequently irrelevant to Wallace-Hadrill's argument
for 303. He tries to paper over the gap between 300 and 303 with
a rather nonsensical note-' If Diocletian became emperor in 284,
his 16th year is 300, though the Arm. Chron. aligns the regnal
years with the Olympiads so as to make it 303' (p. 248 n. 8) 9 -
but the fundamental contradiction remains. There is, therefore,
no valid evidence that Eusebius concluded the Canones in or just
before 303.
More recently T. D. Barnes has come out strongly in favour of
277 (Year 2 of Probus) as a terminal date for the Canones and the
early 290s as the date of composition, though this view has not
gained widespread acceptance. This date depends chiefly upon his
early dating of Eusebius' Onomasticon and HE, both of which
must have been written after the Canones. 10 The specific terminal
date of 277 for the Canones follows an earlier suggestion by Rudolf
Helm. 11 The sole direct evidence for this conclusion is the fact
8 For the problems with the Armenian translation, see Mosshammer
(cit. n. 2), pp. 6o-63, 73-79. For Jerome, see R. W. Burgess, 'Jerome and the
Kaisergeschichte', Historia 44 (1995), 355 n. 31, and my forthcoming paper cited
inn. 6, above. The overall accuracy of Jerome is confirmed by comparison with
the Syriac traditions and other Greek witnesses.
9 In his book (cit. n. 5) he strays even further from his own argument and the
truth: 'the sixteenth year of Diocletian ... in Eusebius' dating is 303' (p. 43).
°1 For this, see below, nn. 17 and 29.
11 'Editions', p. 193, and C and E, pp. uo-11, 113, and 146.
I

that it is in this year that one finds a synchronism of five local
eastern calendars-those of Antioch, Tyre, Laodicea, Edessa, and
Ascalon-with Year 2 of Probus. 12 The first problem with the
date of 277 is that Eusebius would only have been at most seven-
teen years old when he wrote the chronicle. 13 This is virtually
impossible and Barnes actually posits composition almost fifteen
years later, in the early 29os/ 4 yet such a large gap between the
date of composition and the conclusion of the work is most
implausible. 15 Barnes explains the gap by claiming that Eusebius
ended his chronicle in 277 as a compliment to Anatolius, Bishop
of Laodicea (Canones 223i), whose famous Easter canon either
began or ended in that year, but he does not explain the connection
between Anatolius and the five local calendars noted by Eusebius.
Unfortunately, there seems little reason why Eusebius would have
ended the Canones, a work of universal Christian history and
chronology, with such an obscure and irrelevant set of local syn-
chronisms, simply because a famous Easter canon began or ended
12 On this synchronism, see the comments of Mosshammer (cit. n. 2), p. 75;
Grant (cit. n. 3), pp. 7-9; and Eduard Schwartz, Eusebius Werke 2. Die
Kirchengeschichte (GCS 9.3; Leipzig, 1909), ccxlvi--ccxlvii. Mosshammer claims
that this summary 'has no parallel except at the very end of the work', but this is
a misrepresentation of the final supputatio, which records the number of years
elapsed from seven key dates in history to the conclusion of the chronicle. It is
not in any way similar to this list of dates.
13 Born around 260/265; see Barnes, C and E, p. 277.
14 Barnes actually believes that c.293 is the terminus ante quem (evident from C
and E, pp. 1 ro-1 1, and The New Empire of Constantine and Diocletian (Cambridge,
Mass., 1982), 215, discussing boundary changes to Palestine c.293 that he uses to
date the Onomasticon (see n. 17, below)), but he is unduly vague about the exact
date of composition: 'he had completed the Chronicle by ... ca 295', 'Editions',
p. 193; 'before the end of the third century', C and E, p. 111; 'at least a decade
earlier [than 303]', p. 113; 'before 300', p. 277; 'c.295', p. 346 n. ro; and 'the 290s',
'Scholarship or Propaganda? Porphyry Against the Christians and its Historical
Setting', BICS 39 (1994), 59·
15 Eusebius' youth in c.28o is noted with some surprise by Brian Croke ('The
Origins of the Christian World Chronicle', in B. Croke and A. M. Emmett (eds.),

History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney, 1983), p. 128 n. 4), who seems
unaware of Barnes' argument for later compilation and assumes that the Canones
would have been completed within a few years of the date of its conclusion (see
also Brian Croke, 'Porphyry's Anti-Christian Chronology', JTS, NS, 34 (1983),
171 and 184). In a later article ('The Era of Porphyry's Anti-Christian Polemic',
JRH 13 (1984-85), 10 n. 53) he suggests the 28os since 'the Chronicle is not the
work of a novice'. Croke's reaction is to be expected since it is unheard of for a
chronicler to conclude an original chronicle ten to fifteen years before the time of
writing. Andrew Louth ('Date', p. 121), with reference to the HE, which Barnes
dates to the same period as the Canones (see III, below), states, 'Eusebius was
then in his twenties, or even passing from his mid-teens to his mid-twenties: one
wonders if he could really have read as much as the Historia Ecclesiastica presup-
poses by then.'
I
476
in that year. It makes no sense for Eusebius to have charted the
history of the world from the birth of Abraham in 2016 BC, only
to ignore the history and chronology of the most recent fifteen
years of Christian growth and advancement as a compliment to
the author of merely one of what must have been many competing
Easter canons. There is no connection between the two works or
the authors, apart from the fact that Eusebius admired Anatolius
(cf. HE 7·32.13-21, where Eusebius quotes from his works,
including the canon, simply as an example of Anatolius' wide
learning), and even if there were, the synchronization would still
be a tribute to Anatolius whether the Canones ended there or
not. 16 Year 2 of Probus cannot therefore have been the conclusion
of the first edition. Barnes also offers a series of lesser interlocking
arguments in support of a date of composition in the early 290s
but these do not stand up to careful scrutinyY
II
Unfortunately, an edition concluding in 303, 300, or 277 suffers
from another more serious problem and that concerns the indica-
tions of the date of composition derived from Eusebius' own
chronology. The key lies in two examples of obvious, and in one
case bizarre, tampering with the regnal year chronology of Carus,
Carinus, and Numerian, and Diocletian. Eusebius assigns the
reign of Carus and his sons only two years instead of three, a
peculiar mistake for a contemporary reign that Eusebius should
have known well. 18 Even more peculiar, he omits the single regnal
year of Constantius I ( = 305), but attributes to the preceding Year
20 of Diocletian ( = 304) two Years of Persecution (2 and 3,
March/April 304 to March/April 306), two Years of Abraham
16 There is also the observation made by Barnes (C and E, p. I I I) and R. M.
Grant (cit. n. 3, pp. 7-9), who point to the appearance of the eighty-sixth Jubilee
in the same year of Probus, but what relevance this could have to the calendar
synchronization is unknown.
17 These chiefly concern the argument that the Canones and the HE were written
before the Onomasticon, dated by Barnes to c.293, which is demonstrably false,

since the dedication to Paulinus alone dates the work to c.3I3-24. Barnes' greatest
impediment is that he accepts as ultimately Eusebian passages in Jerome's Latin
translation of the preface to the Onomasticon that do not appear in the original
Greek. A number of other problems are discussed by Louth, 'Date', pp. I I 8-20.
18 Since Carus became emperor in the autumn of 282 and Diocletian sole
emperor around the summer of 285 (a period of just under three years), Carus
and his sons should have been allotted three regnal years (for 282, 283, and 284).
For Eusebius' regnal years, see below. That Eusebius knew that they did indeed
reign 'for not three whole years' is demonstrated by HE 7.30.22. The regnal years
in the HE appear to derive (often in an extremely careless manner) from either
the Canones or the same sources as the Canones.
I
CHRONICI CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 477

(232I and 2322), and two Olympiads (271.I and 2). Though
Constantius' death appears in the second half of this split regnal
year (Persecution 3, 2322 Abr., and Olymp. 27I .2), his regnal year
total, twelve years, only counts Year 20 of Diocletian once (his
accession is dated to Year 9 of Diocletian, though this was altered
by Jerome as was the regnal year total in consequence). This
doubling up of Year 20 appears in Jerome (228d-g) and is confirmed
by the Years of Abraham in Pseudo-Dionysius, who assigns 232I
Abr. (p. I I2.27) to Jerome's entry 228d, the retirement of
Diocletian, and 2322 Abr. (p. II3.I) to entry 228g, the death of
Constantius, both in Year 20 of Diocletian. 19 It is also confirmed
by the total number of years of Abraham noted in Eusebius'
supputatio as preserved in the Chron. 724 (p. I00.23): though there
are only 297 regnal years covered between Year IS of Tiberius
and Year 20 of Constantine (325-28 = 297), Eusebius lists 298
Years of Abraham (2342-2044=298). This attribution of two
calendar years (Years of Persecution), two Years of Abraham, and
two years of an Olympiad to a single regnal year, which itself
represents a single calendar year, is unique in the chronicle. An
explanation of this tampering requires an understanding of
Eusebius' use of regnal years and his regnal year chronology. 20
Throughout the early imperial period, starting with Julius
Caesar's sole rule in 48 BC, Eusebius' regnal-year chronology is
almost perfectly accurate. Each regnal year is treated as the equiva-
19 Jerome's Years of Abraham elsewhere generally agree with those in Pseudo-
Dionysius (J.-B. Chabot (trans.), Chronicon Pseudo-Dionysianum uulgo dictum,

CSCO I2I: SS series 3, tomus I, versio; Louvain, I949), except in a few places
where scribal corruption or simple copying errors are involved. Socrates (HE 1.2)
mentions the death of Constantius (in Eusebius =Year 20 2 ), but does not realize
that there are two Olympiads in the one regnal Year (they are only marked every
four years), and so quotes the Olympiad for Year 20\ 271.1. This Olympiad agrees
with that for Year 20 1 in Jerome. Chron. Pasch. (5I8.II, with 5I4.I8 and 5I9.3;
and 524.I7, with 524.9) assigns Year I of Constantine to Olymp. 271.3 and Year
20 to 276.2, just as in Jerome (though the Olympiads are off by one for the reign
of Diocletian because the Chron. Pasch. assigns a correct three years to Carus and
his sons). These agreements show that the Armenian translation is not an accurate
account of the chronological relationship among the regnal years, Years of
Abraham, and Olympiads in Eusebius: e.g. Year 201 in Jerome is 232I Abr. and
01. 271.I; in Ps-Dion. is 232I Abr.; in Socrates. is 01. 271.I; in Samuel Aniensis
(which is based upon the Armenian translation) is 01. 271.4 (col. 663); and in the
Armenian translation would be 2323 Abr. and 01. 271.4, if it went that far.
20 It should be noted that Jerome completely altered Eusebius' chronology for
the reign of Constantine to actually count the doubled regnal Year 20 of Diocletian
as two calendar years ( = 305 and 306), and Helm's marginal accounting of years
follows Jerome's sequence not Eusebius'. Eusebius counted Year I of Constantine
as 306 and the following years in sequence up to Year 20 in 325. For the details
of this, and what follows below, see my paper cited in n. 6, above.
I
478
lent of a full calendar year, whatever calendar it was that he was
using. 21 In reality, of course, an emperor's first and last regnal
years were only part of a calendar year. When regnal years are
treated only as indivisible full years some accommodation must
be made. Eusebius did this by placing the death of Emperor A
and the accession of Emperor B a year early, so that Emperor B's
first regnal year would correspond to the true calendar year of his
accession. Each emperor's accession immediately follows the death
of his predecessor and the first regnal year of an emperor immedi-
ately follows his accession. Thus the death of Emperor A and the
accession of Emperor B occur in the same year, the last year of
Emperor A, and Emperor B's first regnal year then usually begins
immediately. Eusebius was able to maintain a perfect chronology
throughout the early part of his imperial history because of the
accurate records of the lengths of imperial reigns and detailed
information concerning the years in which the emperors came to
the throne and died. \Vithin the first z6o years he errs only once,
but that error was deliberate and makes no difference to the overall
sum of regnal years. 22 However, once he advanced his chronology
into the third century, he made three serious errors that he did
not fully compensate for and that therefore disrupted his entire
chronological sequence: he assigned Caracalla seven regnal years
instead of six, Philip seven instead of five, and Decius one instead
of two.Z 3 By the time he reached the accession of Carus in 282 his
chronology was consequently two years ahead of itself: Year I of
Carus was the equivalent of 284 instead of 282.
The chronological tampering with the reigns of Carus and his
21 Eusebius derived his accession dates for the emperors from Caesar to
Caracalla, at least, from an Olympiad chronicle that equated each Olympiad with
a Seleucid/Macedonian year that appears to have begun in the middle of September
or perhaps on I October.
22 All the emperors between Caesar and Caracalla inclusive, and then
Constantine, have their accessions placed in the correct Olympiad/Seleucid year,

with the exception of Augustus, whose accession was delayed to 45 BC so that the
famous murder of Caesar could appear in the correct 44 BC. If the calendar on
which Eusebius' Olympiad dates were based did begin on I October (as it did in
Antioch, for instance, the standard Eastern calendar), the accession of Nerva (I8
Sept 96) would have been placed one year too late (97) as well.
23 The same figures for the first two appear in HE 6.2I.I (actually seven years
and six months!) and 39· 1. In 7. 1. I he says that Decius reigned 'for not two whole
years', which is correct (about a year and eight months). The one year and three
months of the Canones must therefore be a misreading of the source that he read
more carefully for the HE. The accessions of the following emperors are con-
sequently late: by one year, Macrinus, Elagabalus, Severus Alexander, lVIaximinus,
Gordian III, Philip; by three years, Decius; by two years, Gallus and Volusianus;
Valerian and Gallienus; Claudius; Aurelian; Tacitus; Probus; Carus, Carinus, and
Numerian; by one year, Diocletian.
I

sons, and Diocletian is serious and complicated. Why would
Eusebius have fiddled these regnal years in such a bizarre and
obvious manner? The answer arises from the consequence of the
tampering: by cutting Year 3 of Carus, Carinus, and Numerian,
and Year I of Constantius, Eusebius was able to shed in a short
space of time the two extra regnal years that he had accumulated
throughout the third century (Year 7 of Caracalla plus Years 6 and
7 of Philip minus Year 2 of Decius). In Year 2 of Carus and his
sons Eusebius' overall regnal year chronology was still out by two
years, having been one, two, or three years ahead of itself for almost
seventy years, yet within twenty-one years, by Year I of
Constantine, it was once again synchronized with the overall chro-
nology of calendar years, as it had been in the first and second
centuries. This chronological tampering can only be explained by
the hypothesis that Eusebius was determined to conclude his chro-
nology with a correct overall correlation between calendar and
regnal years (which is, of course, the whole point of compiling such
a chronology). If we look at his entire imperial chronology from
Year r of Caesar (=48 BC) to Year 20 of Constantine (=AD 325)
we can see that Eusebius assigns 373 regnal years to 373 calendar
years. This synchronization is valid back to Year I of Constantine
( = 306, thus 354 regnal years over 354 calendar years). Any further
back and the sequence is disrupted, by one year for Diocletian and
by one or two years for much of the rest of the third century. Only
in Year 6 of Caracalla does it come back into synchronization.
For example, as I noted above, in Year 2 of Probus Eusebius
notes the synchronization of five local calendars. In the case of
two of these, Antioch and Edessa, he has in fact noted the date of
the beginning of each era in its correct place. The beginning of the
era of Antioch is noted at I56b in I969 Abr. ( =48 BC). Eusebius
states that Probus 2 (2295 Abr.) is year 325 of the era of Antioch
(as it is, 277 + 48), but there are 327 years of Abraham between
the two notices since Probus 2 is the equivalent of 279, not 277
as it should be. He also notes the beginning of the era of Edessa
at I26h in 1706 Abr. ( = 3 I I BC, i.e. the well-known Seleucid era),
stating that Probus 2 is year 588 of the era of Edessa (as it is,
277 + 3 I I), but there are 590 years of Abraham between the two
notices. 24 In the HE (7.32.32) he states that there were 305 years
between the birth of Christ and the inception of the Great
Persecution (=March/April 303, assigned to 2320 Abr., which is
304), but since he places the incarnation in Year 42 of Augustus,
24 These show that the correlation of these five local eras with Year z of Probus
was copied by Eusebius from another work.

I
480
which is 20I 5 Abr. ( = 2 BC, 2320-2oi 5 = 305), this is one year too
many (302 years+2 years=304 years, or 23I9-20I5=304). 25
As I noted above (n. 2I), for the early part of his imperial
chronology, from Caesar to Caracalla, Eusebius had a source that
dated events by Olympiads and this provided him with the correct
year of each emperor's accession. Thus from 48 BC to AD 2I6 his
imperial chronology is perfectly accurate. From the reign of
Caracalla, however, he had to rely solely on the length of each
emperor's reign in years and months to construct his regnal year
chronology. To this he must have added a local era, such as the
years of Antioch or Edessa, that would have provided known
contemporary dates leading back to a beginning fixed at some
accurately established point in the past. It was while he was using
these sources that his chronology got ahead of the correct calendar
years since he did not know in what year anyone became emperor,
he only knew how long each was emperor (and this information
was often inaccurate). He obviously knew his contemporary chro-
nology and was easily able to equate current regnal years with the
years of his local calendar and then work them backwards with
perfect accuracy. We can see from his preface and supputatio that
he did indeed work his chronologies both backwards and forwards
(Jerome, IO-I8, 250). It was only when his inaccurate non-
contemporary history, worked forwards, met his accurate contem-
porary history, worked backwards, that he ran into difficulty: he
faced an overlap of two years.
It is Year 20 of Diocletian that marks this final 'seam' between
Eusebius' accurate contemporary chronology and his inaccurate
non-contemporary chronology. He seems not to have been able
to calculate where the errors of his earlier chronology were and
he could not simply cut two years from the end of Diocletian's
reign. He made his first cut in the reigns of Carus and his sons.
This left one year unaccounted for at the end of Diocletian's reign,
and so rather than cut Diocletian's total, he ingeniously opted to
cut the single regnal year of Constantius (I May 305 to 25 July
306). In this way Constantine's regnal years could start with Year
I accurately associated with the equivalent of 306 right after Year
20 of Diocletian, even though Year 20 of Diocletian was the
equivalent of 304 (since Year I= 285). The solution was almost
perfect. Unfortunately for Eusebius, at exactly this point he was
dealing with a subsidiary 'local' chronology, the Years of
Persecution, which extended from Year I9 of Diocletian. When
25 I count two years because Eusebius would have dated the Nativity to
6 January 2 nc not 25 December, which is a western tradition.

I

he cut Year I of Constantius, he also cut Year 3 of Persecution.
In order to maintain his overall accounting of regnal years, but
still be able to take account of the cut regnal/persecution year
locally, he added the events of Constantius' sole year as emperor
(the death of Constantius and the accession of Constantine) and
the marker for Year 3 of Persecution to Year 20 of Diocletian,
which was already Year 2. The doubled years of Abraham and
Olympiads are a later compilation error created in the final draft
by mistakenly counting the Year 3 of Persecution as a regnal year,
hence the extra Year of Abraham noted above (p. 477). The Years
of Persecution consequently run correctly in spite of the excised
regnal year, there being ten Years of Persecution between Year I9
of Diocletian (303) and Year 7 of Constantine (3I2), even though
there are only nine regnal years involved (2 + 7).
Confirmation that this doubling up of dates is in fact an attempt
by Eusebius to maintain what he perceives to be the correct
chronology comes from a similar chronological 'fudge' to be found
at Jerome, 105-106. From his research Eusebius knew that the
rebuilding of the Temple took place in the second year of Darius
and Olympiad 65.I (Chronographia, pp. 57-59 (Karst); Canones,
IO. I2-3, I8.3-5, and 105ac). Unfortunately his Persian chronology
is one year short, so the second year of Darius actually ends up
in Olymp. 64.4. To rectify the situation he repeats Darius' second
year again in Olymp. 65.I, even though the regnal years for the
parallel kingdoms advance one ye,ar (Tarquinius Superbus of the
Romans from 27 to 28 and Amyntas of the Macedonians from 33
to 34· Next to the first second year he adds the following note,
Ideo secundus annus bis scribitur, quia unus annus in magorum fra-
trum VII mensibus computatur (Helm, I05a"'; cf. I04a.22-26). This
is essentially the reverse of what I have described above under
Diocletian, an expansion of regnal years rather than a contraction.
If the Canones had been compiled at any date before 306 the
chronology at the end of the work would have come back into
synchronization around the date of composition, as Eusebius tried
to match contemporary chronology worked backwards with non-
contemporary chronology worked forwards. Year 2 of Probus
should be the equivalent of 277 (following Eusebius' method of
placing Year I in the year of accession), yet it is in fact the
equivalent of 279. The accession of Carus is also two years late,
284 instead of 282. The reigns of Probus and Carus are therefore
treated just as vaguely and inaccurately as any of the earlier third-
century reigns; there is no evidence of contemporary compilation
around Year 2 of Probus. It cannot be the concluding point of the
first edition. The reign of Diocletian is also out by one year, so
I
482
neither 300 nor 303 can be the concluding point of the first edition.
We have seen above both the lengths that Eusebius went on to
achieve correct contemporary chronological synchronization at the
end of his work and his ability to calculate accurately and record
almost 370 years of imperial chronology. We have no grounds for
assuming that such zeal for chronological accuracy and the accom-
panying skill were lacking in the first edition. The first edition of
the Canones must therefore date after 306, since that is obviously
the seam between contemporary and non-contemporary history.
In the tangled web of controversy concerning the dating of the
Canones and the HE, this chronological observation is the strong-
est evidence yet advanced. And if the Canones must date after
306, then the HE must as well.
III
Eusebius states in HE 1. 1.6 that his Chronici canones was com-
pleted before the HE, though he gives no indication of the lapse
of time. The nature of the comment suggests that it had been
long enough for the Canones to get into general circulation, since
he is countering a potential criticism of his new work, that it
covers the same ground covered by the Canones. He states that
the Canones was merely an eTTtTop.fJ, while the HE had a narrative
that was 7TA1JpEaTaT7J. It is obvious that he has used the Canones as
a source, however summarily, but he has revised some of the
chronology and content as a result of his more extensive and
careful reading, one supposes, though he failed to emend the text
of the Canones in accordance with it, even in his later editions,
probably because of the daunting nature of such a task.
This is an important observation, because it disproves any theory
that holds that there were major differences between editions of
the Canones. 26 A further example confirms this conclusion. In the
Canones he states that there were 406 years between the first
Olympiad (1241 Abr.) and the capture of Troy (835 Abr.) (1 1.8,
26 See Mosshammer (cit. n. 2), pp. 75: 'a major change in format between the
two versions is not likely. Eusebius had only to add a few pages to the Chronicle,
not rework the whole', and 6r, quoting J. K. Fotheringham, 'Aliud est producere,
aliud redigere'. See Croke ('Era', cit. n. 15), pp. 12-13, esp. p. 13: 'Given the
tedium and complexity of copying a chronicle like that of Eusebius, it is scarcely
likely that the whole chronological frame-work set out in the Chronographia was
reworked when the point of the second edition was simply to bring the work
up-to-date, that is by expanding the canons'.
I

I3; 6oac; 250.IO, I4 [IS6I-II55 =406], and I24I-835 yet =406)/7
in the Praeparatio Evangelica (written between c.3I4 and 3I8) he
twice gives the figure as 408 years (I0.9.6 and 7). If, as some claim,
Eusebius had revised the text of the Canones for the edition of 325,
he obviously would have changed his chronology of 406 years to
408 years as part of that revision, to accord with his new calcula-
tions. He obviously did not, which indicates that the chronology
of the 325 edition remained unrevised in the light of new calcula-
tions made in the 3IOs. As we shall see below, there is no evidence
that he undertook extensive revisions of the HE either.
There are a number of hypotheses concerning the date of the
first edition of the HE, the common being that it originally
concluded with book seven (c.303, but before the persecution,
thus at the same time as the Canones), with book eight (c.3I I), or
with book nine (3I3/I4). 28 As I have noted above, T. D. Barnes
argues for a first edition before c.293, concluding, like the chron-
icle, around 277, near the end of book seven. In his view the HE
represents a universal history of the church only down to the late
270s, which must therefore mark the end of the first edition. 29 It
is these early dates especially that must concern us now, for solid
evidence dating the HE before 306 would seriously undermine
the date for the Canones that I am proposing.
The manuscripts reveal traces of editions completed in 3I3/4,
3 I 5/6, and 324/5, and a modification of the 324/5 edition in 326
to remove Crisp us (this latter only in the Syriac translation). 30
The evidence for these editions is chiefly the textual variants
arising from later emendation in the early Greek manuscript tradi-
27 The 405 years stated at 86a" is a scribal error on Jerome's part. The Armenian
translation gives 405 years between the two events because it antedates the start
of the Olympiads by one year (I240 Abr. instead of I24I). Jerome's chronology
is confirmed by other witnesses.
28 For various supporters of these views, see Barnes, 'Editions', pp. I9I n. 2
and I99, and C and E, pp. 346-47 n. Io; Quasten (cit. n. 3), pp. 3I5-I6; Wallace-
Hadrill (cit. n. 5), pp. 39-43; Lake (cit. n. 3), pp. xix-xxiii; and Louth, 'Date',
pp. II2-I3, II4-I5, and I22-23. To these can be added Grant (cit. n. 3),
pp. I4-I5, for a date not much earlier than 303. Grant's reasons for dating the
work to this period are too subjective to be of assistance in this analysis ('an earlier
date rather than a later one would allow adequate time for the changes within the
first seven books which we hope to establish', p. I5). With regard to these changes,
Barnes rightly concludes, 'I do not believe that Grant has established [his conclu-
sions] satisfactorily', C and E, p. 346. See also T. D. Barnes, 'Some Inconsistencies
in Eusebius', JTS, NS, 35 (I984), 470-75.
29 'Editions', pp. I99-20I; C and E, pp. III, I28-29, I45-47; and personal
communications.
30 This was first established by Schwartz (cit. n. I2), pp. xlvii-cxlvii, and is
described by Quasten (cit. n. 3), p. 3I5; Barnes, 'Editions', pp. I96-98; Grant
(cit. n. 3), pp. IO-I3; and Louth, 'Date', pp. III-I2, II3-I4.
I
484
tion: minor tampering for political reasons in most places and the
rewriting of book eight in 3 I s/6 to compensate for the removal of
the short recension of the Martyrs of Palestine (see Appendix I).
There is no trace in the manuscripts of any edition earlier than
3 I 3, especially in books six and seven, where the supposed differ-
ences between the earlier and later editions were great (see below),
even though Barnes' putative first edition of before c.293 was in
circulation for almost twenty years and that of c.303 for ten years,
certainly long enough to leave some trace in a tradition that can
otherwise distinguish editions completed fewer than five and ten
years apart. This lack of manuscript evidence makes an edition
before 3 I 3 most doubtful. 31
Adding to this doubt are the obvious later references scattered
throughout books one to seven. 32 None of these references suggests
a date later than the end of book nine, which corresponds to the
manuscript evidence, an important agreement that seems to have
been overlooked. A number of these references indicate other
works that Eusebius had written, such as the Eclogae propheticae
(303/3I2; 1.2.27) and the Life of Pamphilus (3I0/3II; 6.32.3;
7.32.25), or works of others that did not appear until later, such
as the forged Acts of Pilate (probably c.3 I I; 1.9.3-4, I 1.9), the
Doctrine of Addai (c.3oo; 1. I 3), and Porphyry's Against the
Christians (c.300 (or perhaps c.275); 6. I9. 2-I I). Nowhere does
Eusebius refer to works written after 3I3. Louth notes that
Eusebius' account of Origen, which takes up much of book six
(roughly I-6, 8, I4-I9, 2I, 23-28, 30, 32-33, 36-39 of 46 chap-
ters), refers three times to Pamphilus and Eusebius' Defence of
Origen (6.23.4, 33.4, 36.4) and almost certainly derives from it,
though it was not written until 308/3 I o. 33 If this material had not
originally existed, book six would be much shorter indeed and
would lack its central unifying focus. In books one to seven
Eusebius also makes reference to later events, especially the Great
31 On this, see also Lane Fox (cit. n. 3), p. 607.
32 Barnes provides lists in 'Editions', p. 201 n. 28, and C and E, pp. 146, 346
n. ro, and 355 nn. r66-67, 170, 172: r.r.2, 2.14-16, 2.27, 9.3-4, rr.9, 13; 4.7.14;
6.19.2-15, 23.3-4, 32.3, 33-4, 36-4-7; 7.18.3, 30 index and chapter heading, 30.22,
31, 32.1-4,22-32. To these can be added 7.1r.26 (on the persecution) and 7.30.21
(which refers ahead to 8.r.7-9). Yet Barnes claims that Eusebius only 'slightly
retouched' the first seven books when he created the second edition (C and E,
p. 149). As a general, though not invariable, principle, I agree with G. A.
Williamson in the preface to his Penguin translation of the HE: 'in the absence of
textual evidence that they are afterthoughts we ought to treat all references to late
events as proof of late writing' (p. 21).
33 'Date', pp. 121-22. See also Lane Fox (cit. n. 3), pp. 6o7 and 774 n. 33· See
Wallace-Hadrill (cit. n. 5), pp. 160-65, who derives all or parts of I-3, 8, 15-16,
r8-19, 23, 28, 30, 33, 36, 37, and 39 from the Defence of Origen.
I
Persecution: 1.1.2; 7.I1.26; 7.30.22; 7.32.I, 4, 25, 28, 29, 31. The
reference to Peter of Alexandria at 7 .32.3 I, for example, can hardly
be an addition made at the same time as 9.6.2 (the correct chrono-
logical place for the notice), since it contains more information
than the later note. Its appearance does, however, make perfect
sense if Eusebius wrote books seven to nine as a single block
(though most of the current book eight is a later addition, includ-
ing the reference to Peter in 8.I3.7), commenting on Peter as he
came up in the narrative, directly or through association. So
numerous and so integral to the content and structure of the
history are all these passages that if we were to accept them as
later additions, the only possible hypothesis would be that they
were included as part of a complete rewriting of almost the entire
work for the edition of 3 I 3/4, not as part of a simple revision to
keep the work up to date. Yet apart from the replacement of book
eight there is no evidence for alteration or revision on this scale
in later editions.
Like book six, book seven could hardly have existed as it does
now simply with the later references removed, 'ending almost
exactly where the first edition of the Chronicle ended' with a
reference to the death of Aurelian, the accession of Probus
(7.30.22), a section on two recent bishops of Laodicea (32.5-2I),
and 'a brief statement of the names of the bishops who occupied
the principal sees at the time of writing'. 34 Those who argue for
a date of c.303 must also explain why Eusebius would have con-
cluded his history with the beginning of the persecution in
March/April 303, a perverse and ignoble conclusion for such a
work (unless he happened to finish it in January or February!). It
should also be noted that Eusebius' list of emperors at 7.30.22
omits Tacitus and Florianus, short-lived Augusti of 275-76,
incorporating their regnal year into Aurelian's total. It appears to
be a deliberate simplification and as such is understandable in
3I3, almost forty years later, but is rather harder to explain in the
early 290s or even in 303. An early date of composition can only
be maintained by positing massive revision at a later date-especi-
ally to books six and seven-revision for which there is no
evidence. The same problems exist for an edition concluding with
book eight. 35
34Barnes, 'Editions', p. 200, and C and E, pp. 129 and 145-46.
35The view of, for instance, Schwartz (cit. n. 12), pp. lv-lvi, and H. J. Lawlor
in Hugh Jackson Lawlor and John Ernest Leonard Oulton (trans.), Eusebius,
Bishop of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine 2
(London, 1928), pp. 3-6. This hypothesis rests almost exclusively on an inconclus-
ive comparison of the wording between the preface (1.1.2) and passages of books
seven and eight (7.32.32, 8.1.1, 16.1).
I
486
No one has produced any evidence that any passage outside of
book eight is in fact a later addition, apart from the hypothesis of
an early edition itself, which is simply petitio principii, arising out
of the need to dispense with evidence contradicting an early edi-
tion. This is, I believe, the Achilles heel of any argument that
places the composition of the HE before 3 I 3: there is no evidence
that Eusebius ever carried out massive revisions of the sort
required for the argument of an edition earlier than 3I3/4 and the
burden of proof must lie with those who claim that he did.
I can find no solid, objective evidence to suggest an edition
earlier than 3 I 3, which would therefore be identical to Barnes'
'second edition': books one to seven, the preface to eight with the
short recension of the Martyrs of Palestine, Galerius' edict (the
'palinode'), the 'appendix', and book nine. 36 If this is so, and the
first edition of the HE was written in 3 I 3/4, then there is nothing
to contradict the dating of the Canones proposed above and its
first edition must therefore date between 306 and 3 I 3/4·
IV
The reference to the Canones in the preface to book one of the
Eclogae propheticae, that is to book six of the General Elementary
Introduction, provides a general confirmation of this date for the
Canones. This work could date to any period of general persecution
between March/April 303 and May 3 I I, and December 311 and
May 3 I 3, since it refers to the suppression of Christian worship
and the detention of bishops, though Eusebius was imprisoned
for a time during the second bout of persecution, making this
later period less likely. As noted above (n. I), book ten of this
work would seem to date after 309. Whatever the date, Eusebius'
careful explanation of his methodology in composing and arran-
ging the Canones implies that he was still in the process of complet-
ing the work and that the reader would have to take his word for
it that he had proved the antiquity of Moses and the succeeding
prophets. 37 It seems obvious from this unique descriptive refer-
ence that Eusebius did not expect his readers to be familiar with
the work; it is quite different from his reference to the Canones at
the beginning of the HE, where he assumes that his audience is
familiar with it, just three or four years later. We unfortunately
36 Barnes, 'Editions', p. 201. This is the conclusion of J. B. Lightfoot and B. F.
Westcott s.v. 'Eusebius', in William Smith and Henry Wace (eds.), A Dictionary
of Christian Biography, Literatures, Sects and Doctrines 2 (London, r88o), 322-23
(which is accepted in principle by Lawlor (cit. n. 35), p. 3), Lane Fox (cit. n. 3),
p. 6o8, and Louth, 'Date', p. 123, among others.
37 He starts off with 'Let it be known .. .' ('la·riov).
I

cannot tell how much further than Moses he had got when he
was writing this part of the General Elementary Introduction. Since
we cannot date the General Elementary Introduction with any great
precision, it cannot help with a specific date for the Canones, but
the two works do appear to have been contemporary, which is an
important confirmation of the general date of the Canones put
forward here.
v
Eusebius' stress on the Years of Persecution, which start from
the beginning of the persecution in Caesarea in March/April 303,
and their use as the basic chronological system in both the Canones
and the Martyrs of Palestine, in contrast to their very infrequent
appearance in theHE(7.32.31 (ninth year); 8.13.10 (second year);
16.1 (tenth and eighth years)), 38 suggests a close correlation in
conception between the first two works. Eusebius' expedient of
doubling up the second and third Years of Persecution, rather
than just omitting the system altogether and avoiding the entire
problem, suggests that this section was written at a time when he
believed that a close accounting of the individual years of the
persecution was of great importance. The evidence of the different
uses of this system in the existing book eight of the HE (it does
not appear in book nine) and the two recensions of the Martyrs
(on which, see Appendix I) indicates that this would have been
before 313/4, probably at the same time as the Martyrs was being
completed. If the Canones and the Martyrs are seen as comple-
mentary, it would help to explain why Eusebius makes no mention
of events during the persecution in the Canones apart from the
deaths and accessions of emperors. 39 This really only makes sense
if he was relying (or expecting to rely) on another narrative (the
Martyrs) to provide the details. One can hardly imagine Eusebius'
concluding the Canones at a date before the Martyrs and not
commenting in some way on the persecution he saw around him.
The HE, on the other hand, presupposes both works and is an
advance on both: a full narrative of Christian events, instead of
an epitome, with a revised chronology, combined with an epitom-
ized and rewritten version of the Martyrs as one of its chapters.
38 The first two of these resemble entries in the Canones, 227k and zz8d (the
martyrdom of Peter of Alexandria and the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian).
39 For this, see my paper cited in n. 6, above.
I
488
VI
A date for the Canones between 3o6 and 3 I 3 is further confirmed
by Eusebius' own comments on its genesis and by its strong apolo-
getic nature. In his preface to the Canones (reproduced and trans-
lated in Appendix 2, below) Eusebius makes it clear that it was
Porphyry of Tyre's contradiction of established Christian and
Jewish chronologies regarding Mwa ws apxatOTYJS in book four of
his KaTii Xpwnavwv (Against the Christians) that led him to under-
take his own chronological researches in the first place. 40 Eusebius'
researches revealed that both were incorrect, and he drives the
point home again and again throughout his preface. The question
of Moses also appears in the preface to the Chronographia, where
it is listed as the first goal of his work (Arm. r. I 6- I 8 = Grk.
I67.I8-2o (seen. 2)). The importance of Porphyry's chronology
for the date of Moses is emphasized again in Eusebius' discussion
in the Praeparatio E<vangelica, where he quotes Porphyry first and
analyses his chronology for Moses at length (I0.9.I1-25), 41 before
going on to quote and analyse the Mosaic chronologies of Africanus
(chapter ten), Tatian (chapter eleven), Clement (chapter twelve),
and Josephus (chapter thirteen), four of the five Christian and
Jewish authors he quotes in the preface to the Canones (only Justus
is missing). The discussion of his own methods (deriving from his
preface to the Canones) covers only 9-2-IO. Thrice in Praeparatio
40 Because he dates the Canones about ten years before the appearance of Against
the Christians Barnes denies that Eusebius used Porphyry in his first edition (C
and E, p. II3. and 'Scholarship' (cit. n. I4), 64; cf. however, p. 59 of the latter
article and idem, 'Pagan Perceptions of Christianity', in I. Hazlett (ed.), Early
Christianity. Origins and Evolution to A.D. 6oo. In Honour of W. H. C. Frend
(London, I99I), 239-40). This causes him a number of difficulties, not least that
he must posit Euscbius' use of Porphyry for the first time in the latter half of 325,
not even a year after Constantine's order calling for the burning of all copies of
the work and his prescription of the death penalty for anyone who possessed a
copy of it (on which, see Barnes, C and E, p. 2I I, and 'Scholarship' (cit. n. I4),
p. 53). This hypothesis also requires improbably extensive revision to the Canones
(see above). Barnes' supporting argument based on Eusebius' methods of quoting
the Canones in the Praeparatio Evangelica is contradicted by the very authority he
cites (Karl Mras (ed.), Eusebius Werke 8: Die Praeparatio Evangelica (GCS 43.2;
Berlin, I956), 466). My date for the Canones would remove perhaps the largest
obstacle to Barnes' dating of Against the Christians to c.JOO, instead of the more
widely accepted c.275 (see n. 45, below).
41 His use of Porphyry in Praeparatio ro.9 is rather different from that in the
Canones. He quotes him chiefly to demonstrate that even a pagan author admitted
the antiquity of :VIoses and then as a whipping boy to show that his chronology
was incorrect. There is no reference to the a1roAoyfa ('admission', 'confession') of
Porphyry in the preface to the Canones, yet it appears twice in the Praeparatio
( I0.9. I I and 25; see also I I, I 7, and 23) and is the key to his quotation of Porphyry
in that work.
I

10.9 he refers MwaEW<; apxm6TYJ<; (chapter nine title, 9.1, 9.II;
see also 9.17: [/Iopqn!pwc;;] "TraAat6TEpov TOV MwaEa avv{aTYJatv) and
states that it was proven in his Canones. The discussion of the
antiquity of Moses in the Praeparatio also links with the Eclogae
propheticae, where he says, TTJV MwvaEw<; Kat Twv U al!Tov 7rpocpYJTWV
6.pxat6TY)Ta Dt' avTwv [i.e. the Chronici canones] 7rapwn]aafLEV (PG
22.1024A). Nowhere else does Eusebius refer to the conclusions
or proofs of the Canones.
Eusebius' preface shows that he is clearly initiating a dialogue
with Jewish, pagan, and even earlier Christian historians and apolo-
gists over what was probably the most fundamental chronological
crux of Jewish and early Christian apologetic. 42 In fact, the first
word of the preface, and thus of the Canones as a whole, is MwvaEa.
There can be little doubt, therefore, that the question of the
antiquity of Moses provided the original impetus for Eusebius to
compose his work of chronography and that Porphyry's variant
chronology in his Against the Christians was a key factor in the
genesis of Eusebius' interest in Christian chronology and an import-
ant source for the development of the rest of the work. 43 In its very
genesis, then, the Canones was intended to refute the historical and
chronological evidence presented by the pagan historian Porphyry
in his Against the Christians and was therefore intended as a work
of apologetic. 44 Such a purpose accords more with the period of
306 to 313 than the early 290s or even the years before 303,
especially if Porphyry's Against the Christians dates to the last years
of Porphyry's life, c.300-305, as Barnes maintains. 45
42 See, for example, Josephus, Against Apion I.I04, 2.I54-56, 168, 279-8I;
Justin, Apologia 1.44.8, 59-6o; Ps-Justin, Cohm-tatio ad Graecos 9-13, 25-26, 3I;
Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos JI, 36-41; Theophilus, ad Autolicum 3.20-21, 29; and
Clement, Stromata I. IOI-70 (21-26). On these, see the analysis of P. Antonio
Casamassa, Gli apologisti greci (Rome, I944), 22-24, 67, 95-96, II8-I9, I42-44,
I98-99. See also Jean Pepin, 'Le "Challenge" Homere-Moi:se aux premiers siecles
chretiens', Revue des sciences religieuses 29 (I 955), IOS-22, esp. IOS-I4; and Richard
Goulet, 'Porphyre et Ia datation de Mo1se', Revue de l'histoire des religions I92
(I977), I37-64, esp. I37-4I and I42-44.
43 See, for example, Jean Sirinelli, Les vues historiques d'Eusebe de Cesaree durant
la periode preniceenne (Dakar, I96I), 54: 'Ia fixation de Ia date de Mo1se [est] le
facteur primordial parmi ceux qui ont amene Euscbe ce projet', and William
Adler, 'Eusebius' Chronicle and its Legacy', in Harold vV. Attridge and Gohei
Hata (eds.), Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism (Leiden, I992), 475, 'Eusebius had
two purposes in writing his chronicle. The first was to demonstrate, through
chronological comparisons, that Moses and Abraham were men of the remote past'.
44 See also the quotation from Adler in n. so below. On Eusebius and his use
of Porphyry for the first edition of the Canones, see the clear treatment of Croke,
'Era' (cit. n. IS), IO-I3.
45 'Porphyry Against the Christians: Date and the Attribution of Fragments',
JTS, NS, 24 (I973), esp. 433-42, and 'Scholarship' (cit. n. I4), 53-65.
I
490
Barnes, because he dates the Canones to the early 290s when
Christianity was secure, widely accepted, and prospering as never
before, denies this apologetic aspect of the Canones:
There is ... no reason to infer from the preface (or from any other part
of the work) that Eusebius composed the Chronicle mainly as a historical
apologia for Christianity. The Chronicle may be interpreted rather as
primarily a work of pure scholarship. 46
Barnes' overall view is summarized well by Averil Cameron m
her review of Constantine and Eusebius:
The Ecclesiastical History and the Chronicle were both begun, on B.'s
view, in an uncontentious mood of scholarship, not written from the first
for apologetic or polemical purposes. Above all, this Eusebius is primarily
a scholar, not a propagandist. So the central chapters of the book can be
taken to support the reliance placed on Eusebius in the rest of it. 47
Unfortunately for Barnes' argument the apologetic aspects of the
Canones are manifest, as we have just seen, and multifarious. 48
46 C and E, p. I I3. Like Barnes (see n. 40 above) Joseph-Rhea! Laurin
(Orientations mattresses des apologistes chrtitiens de 270 a 36I (Analecta Gregoriana

6I; Rome, I954)) claims that the references to Porphyry and his work were added
to a later edition (pp. I I I-12: 'a l'epoque de Ia premiere edition, Eusebe ignorait
le Kata Kristianon') and he claims that the Canones was not a work of apologetic
(pp. 106-13), but he is surprisingly ill-informed about the chronicle and Christian
chronography in general. For instance, quoting Jerome's translation of Eusebius'
preface-'Nam Moyses, licet iunior supra dictis [Semiramis and Abraham] sit, ab
omnibus tamen, quos Graeci antiquissimos putant, senior deprehenditur, Romero
scilicet et Hesiodo Troianoque bello' (Helm, 9.11-I4)-he says 'Cette fac;on de
presenter !'argument est plus evidemment apologetique, mais nous n'avons Ia
qu'un Eusebe remanie par Jerome. On aurait tort, croyons-nous, de tirer Ia pensee
eusebienne d'une preface ou le traducteur a tant brode autour du texte original'
(p. I I2). Eusebius' Greek original of this passage, preserved by Syncellus (Alden
A. Mosshammer (ed.), Georgii Syncelli Ecloga chronographica (Leipzig, I984),
74.11-13), reads as follows: EVpov ... Mwvuia ll€, </>•Aa)l:r)Ows d7TEiv, TOlhwv [Semiramis
and Abraham] p.Ev V W'T pov, 'TOJV ll€ 7Tap' "EAATJULV &.pxaw>..oyovp.ivwv am:iv-rwv 7Tpw{JvTa-
'TOV, 'Op.fJpov Myw Kai 'Hut60ov, Kai aV..wv y£ TWV TpwtKWV.
47 'Constantinus Christianus', JRS 73 (I983), I88.
48 For the various apologetic aspects discussed below, the reader is referred to
the following useful discussions: Croke, 'Origins' (cit. n. IS), pp. I20-24, 126;
Laurin (cit. n. 46), pp. I06-Io; Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second
Century (London, I988), 57, I25-27, ISS-s6, I94-95; William Adler, Time
Immemorial. Archaic History and its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius
Africanus to George Syncellus. Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 26 (Washington. D.C.,
I989), I8-2o, 40-42, 69-7I; idem, 'Eusebius' Chronicle' (cit. n. 43), pp. 468-72,
478-8I; Wallace-Hadrill (cit. n. s), pp. I68-78, I82-83, I8s-89; Glenn F.
Chesnut, The First Christian Histories. Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and
Evagrius (Paris, I977), 92-108, I33-74; Sirinelli (cit. n. 43), 38-4I, 46-59,
497-5 Is; Hendrikus Berkhof, Die Theologie des Eusebius von Caesarea (Amsterdam,
I939), 53-60; and Raffaele Farina, L'Impero e l'imperatore cristiano in Eusebio di
Cesarea (Zurich, I966).
I
Chronology had long been an important tool in the arsenal of
Christian apologists and Christian apologetic chronography had its
roots in Jewish apologetic, the best known example probably being
Josephus' Against Apion. Eusebius was aware of this and in the
Canones he mentions Josephus and his chronologies in 7.I5, 55ac,
I I3 I74d ( = I75· I I-23), I78e, I8Id, I85f, I87 and I9I 8 • The
8
, 8
,
famous Christian apologists Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Clement

of Alexandria, Hippolytus, and Julius African us all used chronology
as an apologetic weapon in their works and not only does Eusebius
mention Tatian, Clement, and Africanus in the preface to the
Canones (see Appendix 2=Jerome, 7.I5) and the chronologies of
Africanus at 86bh·k, I I3 and 2I4c, and of Clement at IOOaa and
8
,
105bd, but the entire chronological structure of the Canones is

clearly based on the supputationes of such apologists as Theophilus,
ad Autolycum 3.28, and Clement, Stromata I.IOI-45· Eusebius was
thus fully aware of his predecessors' work and followed in their
footsteps both in method and in aims. 49 Indeed, he could hardly
have disassociated himself from that tradition and any reader would
have immediately seen his work as a part of it. In essence, that was
the purpose of Christian chronography. Like earlier apologists-
7rAE'iaTot aAAOt as Eusebius himself says (Praeparatio I0.9.I)-
Eusebius uses chronology to prove the greater antiquity of the
Jewish patriarchs in comparison to the Greek gods and heroes,
especially with respect to Abraham, the 'first Christian' (see Jerome,
24ad, cf. 34a 50 and to Moses, who predated all pagan gods, heroes,
8 ),
and philosophers (as discussed above; see Jerome, 9.II-I0-4 and

I2.5-I4.I5, and Praeparatio 10.9-I3).
49 See Adler, 'Eusebius' Chronicle' (cit. n. 43), p. 468; \V. H. C. Frend,
'Constantine and Eusebius', JEH 33 (1982), 591: 'In all Christian (and Jewish)
historical writing there was an apologetic edge. Chronicles were aimed at demon-
strating the antiquity of Christianity (or Judaism) compared with pagan religions,
and this is what Eusebius intended in his historical writings'; and Berkhof (cit.
n. 48), p. 6o: 'Die Chronologie ist also ein Zweig der Apologie. Da liegt der Grund,
daB Eusebius sich so eingehend mit ihr befaBt hat'.
50 See HE 1.4; Wallace-Hadrill (cit. n. 5), p. r8r, and Adler, Time Immemorial
(cit. n. 48), pp. 69-70, esp. n. ros: 'Eusebius' decision to begin with Abraham,
and not some more remote event or person, shows ... that in the Canones Eusebius
the historian had prevailed over Eusebius the apologist. It would have been
dissembling if Eusebius had on the one hand polemicized against the errors and
flaws of non-biblical sources, and then overlooked the similar problems in Hebrew
archaic history. Gelzer suggests as well that Euscbius' sensitivities to chronological
problems had been sharpened by his learned opponent Porphyry, a scholar who
was skilled in identifying inconsistencies in biblical chronology'. This comment is
echoed by Sirinelli (cit. n. 43), p. 52: 'Eusebe iciest avant tout un historien, plus
qu'un apologiste'. Furthermore, by placing Abraham, Ninus, and Semiramis 'uno
codemque tempore in libelli fronte', as Eusebius says in the translation of Jerome
(r6.r3-r4), he could immediately refute Porphyry's chronology.
I
492
Eusebius also explicitly used his new chronological reckoning
to combat, rather than further, the immensely popular and widely
accepted chiliastic views of contemporary Christians, especially
the popular calculations of Julius Africanus, by reducing the age
of the world by three hundred years and refusing to start his
chronology with Creation (Chronographia, 1.25-2.6 (Karst)). 51 In
the end, however, it was Eusebius' variant chronology that led to
the disappearance of his work, for many later chroniclers attacked
and reworked his chronology, including Diodorus of Tarsus,
Annianus, Panodorus, Andronicus, and James of Edessa, often to
suit the standard date of c.AM ssoo for the Incarnation. Indeed,
Eusebius' negative attitude towards millenarianism would seem
to have developed as a reaction against the millennia! expectations
of many during the Great Persecution and out of his own apoca-
lyptic fears that arose during the persecution and that are mani-
fested in the Eclogae propheticae. 52 Other clearly apologetic aspects
of the work include the Euhemerizing interpretation of Greek
mythology evident throughout his discussion of early Greek his-
tory and the constant stress on the accuracy and truth of the Bible
in comparison with the uncertain and conflicting nature of pagan
historians and their chronologies, 53 both aspects aimed at sym-
pathetic pagan readers; 54 the implicitly negative stress on Jewish
chronology (Jerome, zza" (the beginning of Jubilee 41, thus two
51 By placing the birth of Christ only 5 I 99 years after Creation,

Eusebius is the
only eastern chronographer of his time to reject the six thousand year eschatology
popularized by Africanus that placed the birth of Christ in anno mundi 55oo; see
Cyril Mango, Byzantium. The Empire of New Rome (London, I98o), I92, and
Richard Landes, 'Lest the Millennium be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and
the Pattern of Western Chronography, I00-8oo CE', in Werner Verbeke, Daniel
Verhelst, and Andries vVelkenhuysen (eds.), The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in
the Middle Ages (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series I/Studia XV; Leuven, 1988),
I38-39, I4I-5 I, I63-64. On Eusebius' anti-chiliastic views, see Frank S.
Thielman, 'Another Look at the Eschatology of Eusebius of Caesarea', Vigiliae
Christianae 4I (I987), 226-37, esp. 235. On both the question of Moses and
millennialism, see William Adler, 'The Origins of the Proto-Heresies: Fragments
from a Chronicle in the First Book of Epiphanius' Panarion', JTS, NS, 41
(1990), 498.
52 See Barnes, C and E, p. I68, and Thielman (cit. n. 5I). These hostile
views
appear in the HE as well: 3·39·II-IJ.
53 Esp. Jerome, 66a" and 86ad, and e.g. 26bf, 4ob", 50bd, 53bd, 55bh,
56bf;
Hercules: 4ob\ 43b\ 49b1, 5 1bh, s6bc,f, 57b". 59 be, 59bk ( =4obh), 6obd ( =
I574-I I96 Be); Homer: 63bd, 66a", 69bf, 71bb (=I 16o-I017 BC); Hesiod: 7Ibh,
84bc, 87bf ( = IOI7-767 BC); Carthage: 58be, 69be, 7Ib", 81bb ( = I2I4-850 BC).
The same argument against Greek history is made by Josephus, Against Apion,
I. I 5-27' 37-38.
54 On sympathetic pagans as a likely audience for
Eusebius' apologetic, see
Barnes, C and E, pp. I68-69, I78.
I

thousand years from Adam 55 ), 46aa (Jubilee 51), 73ab (Jubilee 61),
109n (Jubilee 71), 174a (Jubilee 81; the beginning of Christ's
ministry), 223h (Jubilee 86), Chron. 724 101.1-2 (Jubilee 86)); 56
the importance of the Incarnation and crucifixion for world history
(Jerome, 24ad, 34a\ 16o-61, 169c, 173-75); 57 the importance of
unbroken apostolic succession (all bishops of Rome, Jerusalem,
Antioch, and Alexandria are named and numbered until the perse-
cution; see HE 1.1.1, 7.32.32, 8. pref.); and the conclusion of the
work with Constantine and the great peace that he brought. 58 It
is easy to see that the Canones made a suitable companion piece
to his General Elementary Introduction, which he worked on at the
same time as the Canones but which was begun and finished
slightly earlier. 59 It was also a necessary prolegomenon for
Eusebius' major apologetic works of the 3 Ios, the Praeparatio
Evangelica and the Demonstratio Evangelica, for, as Barnes
says, these two works consider the relationship of Christianity to
Greco-Roman civilization and culture, and its relationship to
55 By Eusebius' calculations, this point is 3,229 years from Adam (see Jerome,
250.22-23 = 3,184 years to Abraham plus forty-five years), though the first indica-
tion of Eusebius' chronology does not appear until Jerome, 46a• (the death of
Moses is 3,730 years from Adam).
56 See Grant (cit. n. 3), p. 8, who cites the contemporary apocalyptic view
expressed in the Babylonian Talmud that the world would last eighty-five Jubilees
and a portion of the eighty-sixth; Landes (cit. n. 51), p. 206 and n. 8; and Josephus,
Jewish Antiquities 1.13 and 16; 20.261, 'and Against Apion 1.1, 36, and 39, who
says that the Old Testament recounts the history of five thousand years, of which
just under three thousand are covered by the Pentateuch and 2,ooo since Moses
(see previous note). For the Chron. 724 (the famous Syriac epitome of the Canones,
which contains Eusebius' reference to the eighty-sixth Jubilee in his final supputa-
tio), see Chronicon miscellaneum ad annum Domini 724 pertinens, CSCO 4, Chron.
min. 2: Scriptores Syri, series 3, tomus 4, versio, by J.-B. Chabot.
57 See Chesnut (cit. n. 48), pp. 98-108 (the graphic presentation of the replace-
ment of polytheism and polyarchy by monotheism and monarchy through the

reduction of multiple columns to one), and James T. Shotwell, 'Christianity and
History, I II. Chronology and Church History', Journal of Philosophy, Psychology
and Scientific Methods 17 (1920), 146-47 (who is correct in claiming that 'this
view of universal history places Eusebius on a distinctly higher plane than that of
a mere apologist', p. 147 n. 13). Abraham had initiated the first covenant, Christ
the second (Jerome, 24ad), hence the importance of the two figures for the Canones
and its chronological structure; see also Barnes, C and E, pp. 171-72. In another
argument aimed at pagan readers, Eusebius quotes from the pagan historian
Phlegon of Tralles concerning a solar eclipse and an earthquake in Bithynia that
destroyed Nicaea at the time of the crucifixion, a Kai avv<f8H TOL> 1T£pi TO 7Tri.Oo, TOV
awTfJpo> ovp.{J£{3'1}K6aw (Greek: Syncellus, 394.2-12; Latin: Jerome, 174d, who
alters the year of this entry).
58 Obviously only a feature of the final edition.
59 For a discussion of the Eclogae propheticae, books six to nine of the General
Elementary Introduction, see Barnes, C and E, pp. 167-74·

I
494
Judaism, 60 the two fundamental structural pillars of the Chronici
canones. A date of 306/313 clearly and closely links the Canones
with these fundamental works of Christian apologetic.
A final important aspect of the apologetic nature of the Canones,
as well as the HE and the Martyrs of Palestine, is historical
revisionism. Although, as I have argued above, Eusebius made no
major revisions to any of these three works apart from the replace-
ment of a large part of book eight of the HE to make it less
parochial, he did make a number of smaller alterations. A large
proportion of these alterations were of a political nature, to bring
his narrative into accord with contemporary political realities. For
the Canones, this meant removing a reference to Crispus' accession
as Caesar after his execution in May 326. This entailed another
'edition' after that of c.July/August 325, though Eusebius did not
continue his chronology beyond the symbolically important Year
20 of Constantine. For the Martyrs, it meant shifting more of the
blame for the persecution onto Maximinus and heaping extra
abuse upon him that would have been dangerous during his life-
time. For the HE, it meant the purging of Crispus after his death,
as in the Canones, and the addition of invective against and the
reduction of the historical role of the persecutor Licinius. 61 In
Eusebius' eyes, history served ecclesiastical and political necessity
first, and the truth (as we would see it) second, where possible.
For example, as far as the final editions of the Canones and the
HE were concerned, Crispus had never existed.
I can do no better than quote W. H. C. Frend, who has clearly
seen the genesis and deeply interconnected nature of Eusebius'
literary output of this period:
Like his opponents, he was also profoundly influenced and stimulated by
Porphyry's attack on Christianity. In the Preparation for the Gospel,
written c. 3 rz-zo, 62 he quotes him no less than ninety-six times-more
than any other single author. The Preparation formed part of a systematic
and comprehensive defence of Christianity, which had opened with the
°
6 C and E, p. 178. See also pp. 171-74 and 184-85: '[The] central thesis [of
the Preparation for the Gospel and the Proof of the Gospel] is one which the
Ecclesiastical History [and, one should add, the Canones] had stated succinctly and
which the Prophetic Extracts began to refine and de\·clop ... \".'hat is Christianity?
In Eusebius' view, it is the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs, and hence not only
true but primeval. And around this central idea Eusebius has constructed a detailed
interpretation of the course of human history from the Fall to his own day'.
61 For the Canones, see my forthcoming paper cited in n. 6. For the Martyrs
and the HE, see Barnes, 'Editions', pp. 194-95 and 196-98, and C and E, p. 155.
62 Barnes dates this work to c.J14-c.318 and the Proof of the
Gospel to
c.3r8-c.3z3 (C and E, p. z78).
I

Chronicle, continued with the two books Against Hierocles, 63 and included
the Prophetic Extracts (the justification of the Christian argument from
prophecy), the Ecclesiastical History, and finally, the Proof of the Gospel.
This gigantic task of antipagan apologetic was to occupy some twenty
years of Eusebius's life from c. 302 to 320 and in this time he witnessed
the victory of his cause. 64
That some of Eusebius' methods and conclusions should prove
him to be more than a mere apologist, but a scholar and historian
unique to his age, 65 in no way diminishes the apologetic purpose
of the Canones or the fact that Eusebius saw history and chrono-
logy chiefly as weapons for defending the faith during and after
the Great Persecution. The difficulty in interpretation arises from
the fact that Eusebius is the watershed between the strictly apolo-
getic chronography of the past and the more scholarly and provid-
entialist history of the future that he himself helped to usher in.
VII
In the light of sections II to VI, above, the most obvious choice
for a concluding date after 306 and before 3I3, is 3II, the conclu-
sion of the first wave of persecution and the time that Eusebius
had already completed the General Elementary Introduction and
was just completing the Martyrs of Palestine. 66 If so, did Eusebius
conceive, research, compile, and compose the Canones in the
period of May to November/December of 3 I I, while he was
composing the Martyrs? That is quite possible-there is enough
time-but perhaps not likely. The work of the Canones itself
would not have taken much more than a few months of solid work
to compile, calculate, and copy out, and it was in fact the second
of two chronological works, the first being the Chronographia,
though this would have not taken much more than a few weeks
to compile and copy, once the research had been done. We can
only guess when Eusebius conceived the idea of composing the
Chronographia and the Canones. There is, of course, no reason
why he could not have started the work in the dark days of
sporadic persecution between, say, 300 and early 303 (if Against
63 Barnes ('Scholarship' (cit. n. 14), p. 6o) notes with agreement a recent study
by T. Hiigg that suggests that this work was written by a different Eusebius.
64 W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (London, 1984), 478. For Eusebius
as an apologist rather than a historian, see R. M. Grant, 'The Uses of History in

the Church before Nicaea', Studia Patristica 9.2 (TU 108; Berlin, 1972), 177;
Adler, 'Eusebius' Chronicle' (cit. n. 43), p. 469; and Averil Cameron, The Later
Roman Empire (London, 1993), 18.
65 As illustrated by Sirinelli (cit. n. 43). See also the quotations in nn. so and 57.
66 To the best of my knowledge, no one has suggested this date before. On the
date of the Martyrs, see Appendix I, below.

I
496
the Christians had appeared by then), but perhaps he first
embarked on his researches after the lull in local persecution that
began in mid-308, or even before. Between that date and the end
of persecution in May of 3 I I, there was relative peace in Caesarea,
with the exception of one particularly fierce bout of persecution
between November 309 and March 3 I o. 67 Thus we could place
the work between 308 and 3 I I, with completion after May 3 I I.
My feeling is that the bulk of the final compilation belongs after
the death of Galerius. The persecution obviously did not prevent
him from writing the General Elementary Introduction, the Life of
Pamphilus, and the conclusion of the Defence of Origen, as well as
compiling the Martyrs of Palestine, so there is no reason why he
could not have researched and compiled the Canones during the
persecution as well. It is not a tremendously large output and is
mostly compilation.
A date of 3 I I for the Canones immediately changes our entire
view of the work and its purpose. The same also holds true for
the HE. Neither was written in the halcyon days of the z8os or
290s when Eusebius saw nothing but advancement and prosperity
for Christianity as a fully accepted part of Roman society through-
out the Empire. Neither was written in the darkening days before
the Great Persecution, as sporadic persecution and hatred began
to flair up again. Therefore neither the Canones nor the HE are
'contemporary evidence for the standing of the Christian church
in Roman society in the late third century' nor do they 'reflect
the optimistic assumptions of a Christian writing in the reign of
Diocletian before persecution threatened.' 68 The Canones was
written during the persecution itself and finished off in its immedi-
ate aftermath, at a time when Christianity had suffered its greatest
trials, was at its weakest ebb, and was seeking to re-establish itself
as a normal and accepted part of daily life once again, knowing
that it had emerged victorious, but unsure of the future. The
work must be seen and interpreted in this light, in the light of
persecution narrowly survived, propaganda, and apologetic, not
of confidence, peace, and pure scholarship as has been argued by
Barnes. 69 The acceptance of the apologetic nature of the Canones
is of fundamental importance for our understanding of Eusebius
and the reign of Constantine, for Barnes' interpretation and use
67 Martyrs 9.I-II.30; Barnes, c and E, pp. 153-54-

68 T. D. Barnes, 'Some Inconsistencies in Eusebius', JTS, NS, 35 (r984), 471,
and C and E, p. 146.
69 E.g. Barnes, C and E, pp. r 13-20, and rz6-47. As Robin
Lane Fox states
with regard to the HE, 'We misjudge the work and its achievement if we detach
it from its times' ((cit. n. 3), p. 6o8).
I

of Eusebius depend upon Eusebius' scholarly approach to history.
If Eusebius is proved to be an apologist first and a scholar second,
important aspects of Barnes' interpretation of Eusebius and
Constantine are thrown into doubt.
The Canones is therefore a fundamentally backward-looking
document, not forward-looking, as it would have been had it been
written before the persecution. Porphyry's learned attack on
Christianity, the persecution, and the reaction of other Christians
and sympathetic pagans to those two were therefore key factors
in its genesis. Eusebius' response to Porphyry had to be of equal
or greater authority, it had to be as comprehensive, it had to be
based on history, especially pagan history, and it had to defend
the chronology of the Bible and earlier Jewish and Christian
chronography, while correcting them at the same time. In seeking
to counter Porphyry, Eusebius drew upon Christian apologetic
literature and history to create something that had never existed
before: a Christian chronicle, a work that surpassed the narrow
confines of a straight rebuttal to Porphyry by providing Eusebius'
readers with the history of Christianity, the proof of its antiquity,
a demonstration of the uncertainty of pagan history and chrono-
logy, the truth and concordance of the holy Scriptures, an argu-
ment against the obviously strong feelings of millenarianism
engendered by the persecution, and examples of the impact of
God's providence on human history at a time when holy Scripture
was no doubt hard to come by and many individual battles of
Christian and pagan were still to be fought for many years to
come. As such it was a fitting companion piece to the General
Elementary Introduction. And like the Canones the HE, too, should
be seen as a product of persecution and its aftermath.
VIII
The conception and development of the HE seem to arise out
of the nexus of the Martyrs and the Canones. The Martyrs was
probably the first work of the three that Eusebius embarked on,
a contemporary collection of martyr acts that Eusebius probably
began to record in rough form within a few years of the outbreak
of the persecution in 303. The genesis of the Canones derived
from the apologetic need for a chronology to combat the appear-
ance (or perhaps reappearance) of Porphyry in the early years of
the persecution. The General Elementary Introduction picked up
the exegetical and prophetic aspects of Christian apologetic as a
counterpoint to the bare chronology of the Canones. I believe that
it was while working on these three projects-the Martyrs, the
I
498
General Elementary Introduction, and the Canones-that Eusebius
first conceived the idea of a detailed history of the Church, separate
from 'Roman' history, which was essentially collections of imperial
biographies. In a sense it was a case of extending the narrative
structure and individual focus of the Martyrs (and other martyr
acts) backwards in time using the chronological structure and
outline of the Canones, with any non-ecclesiastical material
removed: apostolic succession, Christian leaders and heroes, her-
etics, the downfall of the Jews, Christian martyrs, and the persecu-
tion and its aftermath (HE 1. 1. I -2, a list, it should be noted, that
covers only books one to nine). It was his work on the Canones
(prompted originally by the apologetic question of Moses) that
first drew his attention to Christians as separate historical entities
whose writings and actions could be researched and described
within the confines of contemporary historiography, much as the
Jews had been described in the past. He simply took the bare
outline that he had produced in tabular form and expanded it into
a narrative, concentrating on individuals he had already named,
those who had made the church great and those who had caused
it to suffer, both from within and from without. Such a project
required further detailed research, of course, and this explains
many of the differences between the Canones and the HE. 70
As I suggest below (Appendix I), work on the first edition of
the Martyrs was stopped, perhaps by Eusebius' developing ideas
on the HE, since he does not seem to have published his first
edition, which he had concluded in mid-3 I I, and book eight of
the first edition of the HE was essentially a reworked version of
the Martyrs with a supporting framework at the beginning and the
end. I would suggest that Eusebius probably began to conceive
and research the HE around 3 IO, if not perhaps before. With the
conclusion of the persecution (or so he thought) he realized that
the Church's victory in the face of an all-out persecution made a
perfect conclusion for his developing history and so he decided
to combine the two narrative histories into one, finishing his
history with a version of the Martyrs. Renewed persecution pre-
vented him from continuing work on the HE and in 3 I 3 he
finished the work as far as book nine. Without the Canones and
the Martyrs, therefore, the HE would not have been possible.
On this hypothesis the original purpose of the HE was to
describe the strength and the uninterrupted and unbroken spread
of Christianity in the Roman world before the Great Persecution
of 303, the earlier persecutions that foreshadowed the Great
70 See Barnes (cit. n. 68), p. 472.

I

Persecution, the brave and learned men who counted amongst
Christian heroes, and those-Jew, pagan, or Christian heretic-
who had tried, but failed, to harm it in the past. Amidst the
greatest attempt to eradicate Christianity, the HE was a summary
of everything that the Church had been and how all the courage
of the past had been manifested in the present-day martyrs of
Palestine. It was thus the Church's past that had allowed it to
survive the present. After the final victory in 3 I 3, it became a
triumphant account of how the faith had grown to the point where
even the combined might of the emperors could not extinguish
it. As originally conceived an entire book out of eight, and in the
first edition of 3 I 3 two books of nine, just under about twenty
percent of the total text, were devoted to the persecution, which
was merely eight and then finally ten years out of about 3 I 5. The
persecution was obviously intended as the climax and focal point
of the entire work. The preface to book eight refers to the previous
seven books as narrating the history of apostolic succession and
the eighth as beginning the history of Eusebius' own time, by
which he means the persecution. Seven books of apostolic succes-
sion mirror the seven days of creation, and the culmination of the
narrative is the Great Persecution, the deaths of the persecutors,
and the final victory of Christianity (books eight and nine). Such
a structure is supported by the programmatic preface in 1. I (as
noted above) and the conclusion to book seven, which links to the
preface of book eight and provides a chronological summary from
the Incarnation to the outbreak of the persecution, thus unifying
the first seven books of the early history of the Church, the history
of the Church's past, and linking it to the time of the persecution,
the recounting of its immediate present. Books eight and nine
then form another unit (perhaps originally a single book) with a
single preface recounting the persecution and its ultimate failure.
The shift from the past to the present also involves a shift from
a universal context to a more local one, and this is not unusual in
histories or chronicles that make a pretense of universality while
trying to treat recent or local events as well, especially those
written outside of important centres, like Rome or Constantinople.
This method of composition, the grafting of an account of the
persecution in Palestine onto a universal history of the Church,
is what has given the work its odd structure, a structure that has
caused Barnes and others to suspect an edition ending in c.z8o or
a little later. Eusebius' narrative of universal church history-
which I believe is more the result of an accident of the preservation
of certain documents within Eusebius' easy reach than of any
attempt on his part to present such a 'universal history' -comes
I
500
to an end in the reign of Probus with an account of Manicheism
(7.3I). In 7.32 Eusebius simply mentions and describes a great
number of local ecclesiastics, all of whom were active in the z8os,
zgos, and on into the time of the persecution, such as Dorotheus,
a presbyter in the time of Cyril of Antioch, bishop for twenty
years in the 27os, 28os, and 2gos; Stephen and Theodotus of
Laodicea, who were bishops in succession from the 28os; Agapius
of Caesarea, who died before 303; Pamphilus, who was martyred
in 3 I o; Pieri us and Meletius, of whom Meletius survived into the
persecution and Pierius survived beyond; Achillas, presbyter
under Theonas of Alexandria (elected 28I) and (it seems) later
short-lived bishop of Alexandria (3I2-I3); and Peter of
Alexandria, elected in 30I and martyred on 25 November 3 I r. 71
This local focus sets the scene for book eight. Not much of great
moment was happening in the Church at the time, so there was
little Eusebius could say, and judging from HE 8. I. 7-9 there was
not much he wanted to say. And, as Barnes himself notes, 'In
conformity with tradition, Eusebius remained silent about the
deeds and achievements of living contemporaries'. 72 It seems that
he was unwilling to go into any detail concerning the church's
internal conflicts in the years before the persecution. But more
important, he seems to have run out of written sources and was
relying chiefly on his own recollections, hence the focus on a few
strictly local individuals. In view of my proposed date of composi-
tion, this need not cause any worry or surprise. After the letters
of Dionysius Ctz64) run out (7.I, 3-II, 20-26), he has a dossier
relating to Paul of Samosata (27-30. I g), a written source for
Anatolius and Eusebius in Alexandria (32.5-I2), and the writings
of Anatolius (32.I3-2I). The rest is his own (basically lists of
bishops and stories of local ecclesiastics: 7.2, I2-Ig; 30.20-23; 3I;
32. I-4, 22-32). 73 For book eight and much of book nine he could
rely on his own eye-witness testimony and the testimony of other
eyewitness (parochial though these were), but there was a gap
covering twenty-five years or so before the persecution that he
did not (and could not) narrate in detail from his own certain
knowledge or from any written sources. One can see this lull in
the Canones more vividly, where there is nothing concerning non-
secular history apart from the episcopal lists and the persecution
of Veturius (=HE 8. r.7) between a notice on the Manichees (3
Probus= 278) and the beginning of the persecution ( = 303). Again,
we see no attempt by Eusebius to fill any such gaps in his narrative
71 Barnes excises all these references as later additions. Seen. 32, above.
72 C and E, p. 129.
73 See Grant (cit. n. 3), pp. 9, 14, zo-z1, and Barnes, C and E, pp. 143-46.
I
in later editions of the Canones or the HE. Since the original book
eight concentrated only on Palestine and book nine chiefly on a
few areas of the Levant (with an interesting section on the Battle
of the Milvian Bridge, just north of Rome), the concluding sec-
tions of book seven, with their obvious local character and thus
narrowing focus, act as a prelude to what comes later. The outlook
of the work begins to change with Eusebius' shift to the narration
of events of his own time (7.27). It is these factors that account
for the peculiar shift near the end of book seven, from a universal
history of the Church to a local history of the persecution. We
can thus account for the change in focus at the end of book seven
of the HE without having to posit an edition that ended in 277
or 303.
IX
To keep his Canones up-to-date with the HE and the final end
of the persecution Eusebius probably produced a second edition
in 3 I 3· There is no evidence for this but it seems likely. For this
putative second edition he would have added Years 7 and 8 of
Constantine 74 to the end of the work, two entries on the deaths
of Maxentius and Maximinus, a concluding comment on the
return of peace by Constantine (and Licinius?), two additional
notes concerning the martyrdom of Peter of Alexandria (under
Year I 7 of Diocletian) and the accession of Constantine in the
fourth year of persecution (under Year I9), and the correction
from Year 6 to Year 8 of Constantine in the chronological termini
noted in various places throughout the Chronographia and the
Canones. There may have been a third edition of 315/6, to match
the second edition of the HE, but there is no evidence for it. The
final edition of the HE seems to have been undertaken somewhat
earlier than that of the Canones. The former concludes with the
defeat (death?) of Licinius (19 Sept 324), while the latter was not
completed until after Constantine's vicennalia on 25 July 325.
Interestingly, neither work mentions the Council of Nicaea
74 We do not in fact know whose regnal years followed Diocletian's in the
original edition. I have always discussed the text as it now stands, but there is a
possibility that Years I to 6 of Constantine could originally have been Years 2 to
7 of Galerius, the first year trimmed much as the first year of Septimius Severus
is trimmed to accommodate Pertinax (see Jerome's translation, p. 2IO). However,
after the death of Galerius, who was technically the senior Augustus, there was
no 'new' emperor, as there always had been in the past, whose regnal years could
start from Year I for JII. In the summer of JII it would have made more sense
to Eusebius as a chronographer (not to mention as a Christian) to follow the regnal
years of Constantius and Constantine (who were non-persecutors) right from the
death of Diocletian, and this is what I think happened.
I
502
(June-July 325). For the final edition of 325 he added regnal years
9 to 20 of Constantine, six or seven historical entries, 75 removed
the reference to Licinius (if it existed) from the concluding note
of the edition of 3 I 3, and updated his chronological termini to
Year 20 of Constantine. At some point after May 326 he had
Crispus' name removed from the note concerning his accession
under Year I I (see above). Each new edition would have taken
Eusebius no more than a day to prepare but the impact of that
final edition of 325/6 was enormous, for it was translated by
Jerome into Latin and became the foundation for our understand-
ing and chronology of ancient history right down to the present
day: 'It is doubtful if any other history has ever exercised an
influence comparable to that which it has had upon the western
world'. 76
APPENDIX I: THE MARTYRS OF PALESTINE
The Martyrs of Palestine exists in two recensions, a short version

with no beginning or end that was obviously once a part of the
HE and a long version that is a self-contained, independent work
with a beginning and an end. 77 The inescapable conclusion con-
cerning these two recensions is that a version of the long recension
was completed in 3 I I; that it was adapted and heavily revised for
inclusion as book eight in the first edition of the HE (3 I 3/4); that
this short version was removed from the second edition of the HE
(3 I 5/6) and replaced by a more comprehensive account of the
persecution to 3 I I; and that the long version was lightly revised
to account for political changes since the original composition and
reissued in a second edition.
The only problem with this reconstruction is that in HE 8.I3.7
Eusebius states, with respect to Palestinian martyrs, TovTovs- Kai
To'is- fLE(J' yvwp{fLOVS" 8t' hEpas- 7TOttiaofLat ypar/JfJs-. It is clear from
the context that he is referring to the Martyrs. These words were
part of the second edition of 3 I 5/6, long after the supposed date
of the composition of the Martyrs in 3 I I. As Andrew Louth
75 Accessions of Crispus and Constantine II as Caesars, the

persecution of
Licinius, the martyrdom of Basil of Amasia, the excommunication of Arius (?),
the accession of Constantius II as Caesar, the defeat and death of Licinius, and
the vicennalia of Constantine.
76 Shotwell (cit. n. 57), p. 145.
77 See Barnes, 'Editions', pp. 193-96; C and E, pp. 148-so, rss-s8;
and Barnes
(cit. n. 68), pp. 470-71, whose conclusions, following those of Lightfoot (cit. n. 36),
pp. 319-zr and Lawlor (cit. n. 35), pp. 7-9, cannot, I believe, be avoided.
I
CHRONICI CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 503

states, this amounts to a real conflict in the evidence. 78
Added to
this is the peculiarity of Eusebius' method of composition. Why
would he have simply taken an earlier work-the Martyrs-
shortened it, and made it such a substantial part of a new work
(the first edition of the HE) only two or three years later? This
seems extremely odd, amounting in fact to self-plagiarism.
A possible solution to this perplexing situation is that Eusebius
completed the Martyrs in 3 I I but had failed to publish or circulate
it (or perhaps just circulate it widely) when the persecutions
started up again in November of 3 I 1. 79 Perhaps his intention was
to continue the work when the persecution finally ended and he
could include all of the martyrs. By the time the persecutions
were finally over in 3 I 3 he had decided to include the Martyrs in
the HE rather than update and publish it separately. Perhaps by
3 I I he had already decided to cannibalize it for the HE and did
not publish it for that reason. Whatever the date and circum-
stances, it seems reasonable to assume that the Martyrs' new role
as book eight of the developing HE kept it from being published
as a separate work before c.3I6. There was, therefore, no self-
plagiarism. Once the sections on the Palestinian martyrs had been
removed from book eight for the second edition of the HE,
Eusebius simply pulled out the original work, updated a number
of references to the dead Maximinus, and published it as it was,
without updating it, since everything he wanted to say had been
said in the HE and he had not been in Palestine for much of the
second half of the persecution. 80 As we have seen with the HE
and the Canones above, Eusebius spent very little time on his
revisions, if he bothered to revise at all. This hypothesis thus
explains the peculiarities noted above and is consistent with
Eusebius' known methods.
APPENDIX 2: THE BEGINNING OF EusEBius' PREFACE To

THE CHRONIC! CANONES
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Myw 8 Tov XptaTov, &.p.cp{ T TTJ> Twv l8vwv 81' aOTov 8EOyvwa{a> XP7Jap.ov>
Kat Aoyta 8E'ia ypacpf17rapa8EowK6Ta, TOt> xpovot> &.Kp.aaat KaTa "Ivaxov Elp'ljKa-
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78 Louth, 'Date', p. u6.
79 Lane Fox (cit. n. 3), p. 6o8, suggests that it was 'already prepared, but perhaps
not circulated'. This, of course, left the Canones without any companion text to
fill in the blanks of the persecution (see above).
80 Barnes, C and E, pp. 148-49.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Just past midnight the dispatched courier arrived, bringing twain
of the most-skilled physicians of Jerusalem.
Cornelius watched them with an interest beyond words. His heart
sank down and down again, as he saw them in serious consultation.
Unable to restrain himself, he seized the elder, and drawing him
hastily aside, demanded an opinion. The grave old man only shook
his head, saying: “We may save one.”
“One? One!
“Which? What?”
“Young man, be quiet; do not let thy emotions disturb the patient
or the nurses. Prepare for the worst.”
The husband seized the wrinkled hand of the aged practitioner,
and then flung it from him, crying: “It must not be! It shall not be!”
Instantly he rushed toward the couch, but the two men of healing
intercepted him. Then the elder one said: “We must be obeyed, or
else we will give no commands! Shall we go or stay?”
What a revulsion came! It seemed to Cornelius as if these two
men of skill were angels, and flinging his arms about them, he
hoarsely whispered: “Save, save! Stay and save! All I have I give
you, only save her!”
Quietly they led him to the adjoining apartment; then charged
him, as he hoped for any good to his wife, not to re-enter her
chamber until sent for. Reluctantly he consented, not daring to do
otherwise and yet believing in his very soul that in this hour of peril
the bestowment of love’s caresses on the invalid would be better
than any skill of the stranger. He withdrew to the arch on the roof,
where unmolested he could pray. But his meditations were full of
miserable sights. He thought of the Egyptians in their feats of Osiris,
leading to sacrifice the heifer draped in black; then of Rizpah
defending her relatives; then of the monument in Bozrah, with the
mother holding her dead Son. He thought, amid the latter
meditations, of himself creeping about that monument, in the night,
until he came to another, on which he deciphered the name,
“Miriamne.” The imagination gave him a shock, and he gave way to
it exhausted. An hour or so after he was awakened from a sort of
stupor by the younger of the physicians, who, standing by his side,
addressed him:
“Sir Priest, thou mayst come now; but as thy profession teaches,
nerve thyself to confront any fate, good or ill.”
“How’s my wife?” exclaimed the stricken man, leaping from his
couch and approaching the speaker, that he might devour with his
eyes the thought of the one he questioned.
The emotionless features of the man accustomed to confront
human suffering softened a little to pity. The quick eye of the
missioner discerned the change, then he cried:
“What, dead!”
“No; if thou wilt but control thyself, thou mayst see her for a little
while; there’ll be a change soon.”
The man of healing had done and said his best, but that was bad
enough. He had tried to comfort, but the exigencies were beyond
human powers. “A change soon!”
Hard, mocking words. Apology for bad news! Stepping-stone to
saying the worst is at hand; words so often used by the man of
healing when his art is defeated! How like a funeral knell breaking
the heart has come, again and again, to tingling ears those terrible
sounds: “In—a—little—while—there’ll—be—a—change!” Cornelius
felt all their stunning force, and was instantly by the side of
Miriamne. What a change met his hungry eyes! The fever had died
away; fever, that blast from the shores of Death’s ocean, had
passed, because there was nothing longer for it to attack. The tide
was ebbing. She lay silent, pale and haggard; motionless, except as
to a feeble breathing. The husband would have encircled her with
his arms. It was love’s impulse, but science, the men of healing,
restrained him. There was a little wail just then, and he glanced
around with a look of joy. The nurse had brought the babe close to
him, turning away her own face to hide her tears, but holding the
little one out as if trying to say: “This shall compensate.” Then again
the grief-stricken man turned to the physicians and whispered, in a
half-fierce, half-terrified way: “She’ll live—she’ll be better now.”
The aged man, slowly adjusting the paraphernalia of his
profession preparatory to departure, replied: “Few survive the
Cæsarean section. It was a dire necessity.”
“Lord, behold whom Thou lovest is sick,” moaned the young
chaplain, as he knelt by the couch and buried his face in its
disordered covering. So the tide of life ebbed at midnight, leaving a
stranded wreck at Bethany, and the Christmas chimes turned to
dirges.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE MOTHER OF SORROWS TRIUMPHANT AT
LAST
Are we not kings? Both night and day.

From early unto late,
About our bed, about our way,
A guard of angels wait!
And so we watch and work and pray
In more than royal state.
Are we not more? Out life shall be
Immortal and divine;
The nature Mary gave to Thee,
Dear Jesus, still is Thine;
Adoring, in Thy heart I see
Such blood as beats in mine.
—A. A. Proctor.
undreds were assembled within the “Temple of Allegory,”

and other hundreds, unable to effect an entrance,
tarried around about it. The knell of Miriamne, the Angel
of the Mount, had called the vast congregation together
from Bethany, from the country round about and from
the City of Jerusalem.
There were many signs of subdued sorrow, but the intensive
expression of grief common in the East was absent; neither was
there any of the paganish blackness, which sometimes characterizes
Christians’ funerals, manifest. Though Miriamne was dead, her
sweet, trustful, cheerful spirit still survived and still ruled.
The knights of Jerusalem, led by the Hospitaler, were present, the
latter to direct the services, by request generally extended.
After a “grail” song by his companions, and at its last words, “I
shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness,” the Hospitaler began
discoursing.
“Men and women, death, the leveler, makes us all akin; therefore
all of us feel impoverished by the departure of the angel who shone
upon us here from the form that lies yonder. Miriamne Woelfkin,
daughter of a knight, consort of a Gospel herald, devoted friend of
womankind, disciple of Jesus, was gifted with almost prophetic
insight and power of alluring unsurpassed in our day. Hers was the
power of a burning heart entranced of a superb ideal, and therefore
was it the power of immortal influence. She will live not more truly in
the life she died to give than in the lives she lived to save. She was
an unique woman, but only so because of her superior womanliness.
Being dead, she reaches the reward generally denied the living, full
appreciation. Her career was in part a parallel of her choice
exemplar’s. You have heard how the Mother of our Lord sung her
‘Magnificat’ out of a heart as free as a girl’s, yet as proud as that of a
woman’s glowing in the prospect of honoring maternity. But the last
note of her rapture died on her lips full soon, and she never after in
this life rose to such measure of joy. God permitted her life to pass
through a series of suppressions and griefs, doubtless that she might
exemplify the sad side of woman’s career. The histories of women,
mostly written by men, are marred by the conceits of their writers,
and are at best but obscure pictures. The man with the pen lacks
insight as to the being, whose life is so largely an expression of
heart and soul. The lordly writer clothes his heroes in the light of his
fevered imagination, depicting with bold stroke the mighty deeds of
stalwartness; but he sees few heroines in his horizon. Those he does
see are beyond his power of analysis. He falls to actual worship of
his masculine demi-gods, perhaps as a partial atonement for his
failings toward the fine and noble characters whose traits are too
spiritual for his thought-limits or vocabularies. The generality of
those who discourse concerning women, do it in a patronizing way,
and feel to praise themselves as paragons in doing justice in this,
even by halves. The queenship of Mary is constantly disputed, and
so her lot is more closely linked with that of her sex. As she received
the royal gifts of the Magi, holding them as a sacred trust for Him to
whom her life was utterly devoted, so woman, the bearer and nurse
of the race, gives all that she has without stint to others. Her life is a
suppression; all bestowing; her reward the joy she has in the
lavishness of her bestowals. Hers is the joy of the fountain that sings
because it flows.
“But recently ye saw the Jewish priests deposit on his mount, after
a custom constant since Moses, the ashes of the red heifer. They
burned their sacrifice with red wood. Red pointed to the blood that
can only atone for sin. But underneath all lies a deep lesson. ’Twas
the female instead of the male thus offered, and her ashes gave
potency to the waters of purification. I read this hidden truth: the
sacrifices of the gentler sex work out the purification of the race. As
the moss in the heart of the stone, I see this truth lying in the heart
of the ceremonial! As Christ’s cross precedes the cleansing of
regeneration, so woman’s cross is the means by which the decays of
life are offset by new created beings. By the bier of the wondrous
comforter of others, I may surely appeal to those who hear me and
loved her to seek with quickened ardor to offer the pain-assuaging
myrrhs to those grand souls who go along the way to life’s crucial
glories. I’d have such justice done as would cause all women to
cease pitying themselves because they are such, and go about
rejoicing that God gave them the superlative privileges of
womanhood.”
There came forth a loud cry, with moanings, from the part of the
temple, called the “Mother’s Pillow,” where the honored dead lay.
“Miriamne, oh, Miriamne, you brought me through Gethsemane to
your Calvary!”
A silence almost oppressive fell on the assembly. It was the silence
of a pity too deep for words.
Then spake the Hospitaler, in words as invigorating as a herald of
God’s should be, and yet as soothing as a mother’s to her child in
pain:
“Christ, who loved the young man who was very good and yet not
perfect, loves thee, for He is unchanging in His mercy. Hear me, an
old man, stricken with the years that have schooled, and one who
has experienced the bitterness of widowerhood after loyal, full
loving. God’s hand is on thee. He is schooling thee to carry on the
work begun by thy wondrous consort now asleep.”
“Oh, Miriamne, Miriamne! alone in the dark, I move through
Gethsemane toward thy Calvary!”
Again the silence of pity was broken by the voice of the knight.
“Remember how David of the White Kingdom was called and
furnished for his kingship. ‘He chose David, also, His servant, and
took him from the sheep folds, from following the ewes great with
young. He brought him to feed Jacob, His people, and Israel, His
inheritance.’
“Missioner-shepherd, God calls thee to a ministry of love, for those
whose trials thou hast now been taught, in part, to measure. You
have heard how Hadadrimmon, the fabled god of the harvest, ever
comes, bearing sheaves, with tears.
“Thus speaks the prophet:
“‘In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the
mourning of Hadadrimmon.
“‘And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the
house of David apart, and their wives apart.’
“Young man, God is giving thee a crown in David’s royal line.
“Once more I turn to her who was thy Miriamne’s exemplar and
queen. Let me tell you all of the last hours of Mary, that you may
find instructive parallels. I’ll read from my treasured book of
traditions:
“After the ascension of Jesus, our Mary dwelt in the

house of John upon Mount of Olives, and she spent
her last days in visiting places which had been
hallowed by her Divine Son; not as seeking the living
among the dead, but for consolation and for
remembrance and that she might perform works of
charity.
“In the twenty-second year after the ascension of
the Lord, she was filled with an inexpressible longing
to be with her Son; and, lo, an angel appearing with
the salutation, ‘Hail, Mary, I bring thee a palm-branch,
gathered in paradise; command that it be carried
before thy bier, for thou shalt enter where thy son
awaits thee.’ And Mary prayed that it be permitted that
the apostles, now widely scattered under their great
commission to gospel the world, be gathered about
her dying couch; also that her soul be not affrighted in
the passage through the pale realm of death. The
angel departed; the palm-branch beside her shed light
like stars from every leaf; the house was filled with
splendor, and angel voices chanted the celestial
canticles. The Holy Spirit caught up John as he was
preaching at Ephesus, and Peter, offering sacrifice at
Rome, and Paul, from his place of labor, Thomas, from
India, while Matthew and James were summoned from
afar. After these were called, Philip, Andrew, Luke,
Simon, Mark and Bartholemew were awakened from
their sleep of death. These holy ones were carried to
the Virgin’s home on clouds bright as the morning, and
angels and powers gathered round about in
multitudes. There were Gabriel and Michael close
beside her, fanning her with their wings, which never
cease their loving motions. That night a supernal
perfume of ravishing delightsomeness filled the house,
and immediately Jesus, with an innumerable company
of patriarchs and holy ones, the elect of God,
approached the dying mother. And Jesus stretched out
His hand in benediction as He did when ascending
from the world, long before at Bethany. Then Mary
tenderly took the hand and kissed it, saying: ‘I bow
before the hand that made heaven and earth. Oh,
Lord, take me to Thyself!’ Thereupon Christ said,
‘Arise, my beloved; come unto me.’ ‘My heart is ready,’
she replied; a few moments after: ‘Lord, unto thy
hands I commend my spirit.’ Then having gently closed
her eyes, the holy Virgin expired without a malady;
simply of consuming love, permitted now by the loving
Creator to melt the golden cord binding spirit to body.
And triumphantly amid mourners who rejoiced
exceedingly in spirit, the body of this Queen of the
House of David was entombed amid the solemn cedars
and olive trees of Gethsemane. Now, this happened
upon the day that the true Ark of the Covenant was
placed in the eternal temple of the new heavenly
Jerusalem, as they say; and the saying is good, for
surely, in her heart, this saintly woman kept the law;
the divine manna as well. Even more, she was the
fulfillment of God’s covenant that a woman should
bear the masterers of sin.”
The speaker then knelt; all heads were bowed; he spread out his
hands as in benediction, but spoke not. Yet all in the silence were
blessed, for the manifestation of Christ was there. After the
benediction the companion knights chanted an old grail psalm,
repeating again and again the stately words:
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
As they sang their eyes were turned upward in a rapture as of
men who saw a glorious appearing; and indeed they had a vision of
splendor; but they saw it within, not without.
“There are angels hovering round,” reverently whispered
Mahmood to his camel. He was too full to keep silent; too distrustful
of his wisdom to confide his thoughts to a human being. But the
thought of the old Druse was as exalted as that of the Hospitaler, for
the latter exclaimed, as the congregation slowly moved out to the
strains of the organ:
“Methinks I hear the beatings of mighty wings! Not far away is
Gabriel, the ‘angel of mothers’ and of victories! Yea, verily, I believe
that the spirits of Adolphus, Rizpah, Sir Charleroy and Ichabod are
ministering nigh us!”
Many looked up through their tears fixedly, as if they felt what the
knight had said in their souls.
Then they laid the body of Miriamne in a new-made tomb nigh the
Garden of Olives, not far from the burial-place of Mary the mother of
Jesus.
CHAPTER XLIII.
A COFFIN FULL OF FLOWERS AND A GIRDLE
WITH WINGS.
“Behold thy mother!”—Jesus to John.
wo travelers journeyed slowly along Mount Olivet,

pausing anon to observe the flower-dells between them
and Mount Zion, or to contemplate the wilder prospects
where the wilderness of Judea edged close up to the
hills they traversed. As the travelers passed, the natives
looked after them with curiosity; for the garments of the former,
though dust-covered, were those of personages above the ranks of
the common people; also of a fashion that betokened them
strangers in that vicinity.
One of these men was a youth, stalwart and comely; the other
was gray-haired and bent as if by the weight of years, though a
closer view suggested premature blasting, rather than senile decline.
“Winfred, before entering Bethany, we’ll to the ‘Hill of Solomon,’
the site of Chemosh, the black image of the Roman Saturn.”
Thereupon the twain turned away from the village and soon came
upon a company of revelers, each wearing a crown of autumn fruits,
and all gathered about a platform crowded with hilarious dancers.
“Saturnalia!” exclaimed the elder.
“The worship of Saturn ceased ages ago, did it not?”
“Of the image, yes; but the folly, little changed, continues.”
“This is strange enough; and yet it’s a relief to meet a few happy
people in this land of solemn faces; even if those happy ones do joy
like fools.”
“They celebrate the passing of summer-heat and the coming of
the rains of autumn. Say not fools; they are trying to be glad about
something good, somehow coming from some one somewhere
above them. Perhaps God can resolve scraps of thanksgiving out of
it all.”
“Theirs is the laughter of wine! the laughter of the goat-god, Pan,
whose face scared his mother and whose voice scared the gods!”
“We’ve a persistent custom here, son; and men do not play the
fool for generations after one manner, at least, without cause.
“These attempt to press into the court of Pleasure to cajole her;
all men do that; these have chosen merely an old way. They cling to
the myth of Saturn, the subduer of the Titan of fiction. They say that
deity, dethroned in the god-world, fled to Italy, where he gave
happiness and plenty through life, and the freedom of air and earth
after death, which latter he made to be only a little sleep.”
“That was not more than a mock golden-age; it never came, I
think.”
“But very alluring to those that long for it; they dance half-naked,
typifying the primitive times when men had fewer cares, because
fewer wants.”
“Can one laugh hard fates out of countenance, and make his
troubles run with a guffaw?”
“The devotees of Saturn were wont to offer their children in his
altar-fires, and so ever more it happens; he that bends to the
materialistic solely, kindles altar-fires for his posterity.”
“After to-day what comes to these, peace?”
“Nay, a year all dark and colorless; then another spasm called a
feast—a brief lightning-flash revealing the darkness.”
“And so the years come and go; one generation of madmen, then
another; death the only variety?”
“Nay! I’d have you look upon pleasure of sense deified, taking its
pleasures under the shadows of Chemosh, for a purpose. You
remember we read together, under the palms at Babylon, how the
holy Daniel saw in vision the four winds of heaven striving on the
sea?”
“I remember the prophet’s reverie or revel.”
“The four winds and the sea! the meaning, opened, is conflict on
every hand on earth! Out of the follies and turmoils David’s White
Kingdom will emerge at last. Listen to the words of the inspired seer:
“‘Behold one like the Son of Man! There was given Him a
dominion and a glory that all people should serve Him; an
everlasting dominion!’
“It is coming; my poor faith, amid the conflicts and revels of man,
hears the voice of God crying through the night, as in Eden’s dark
hour: ‘Where art thou?’ My last lesson to my son awaits us at
Bethany; let’s be going.”
Ere long Cornelius Woelfkin and his son Winfred stood silently, and
with uncovered heads, before, but a little apart from, a stately
marble shaft that rose up amid the olive trees of Gethsemane. It
was night, and they were alone. The father motioned the son back,
and alone glided under the shadowing trees, toward the pillar. There
the elder one threw himself down on the earth, close beside the
monument; the youth, deeply moved, but unwilling to intrude upon
the scene of sacred, silent grief, stood aloof. In a small way, there
was a repetition of the grief of the Man of Sorrows, who there, ages
before, yearned in His humanity over a lost world, over those from
whom His heart was soon to part for life. To be sure, the cross of
Cornelius Woelfkin was infinitely less galling, less heavy than that
borne by his Master; and yet it was as heavy as he could bear, and
hence the pitifulness of his grief.
Who can lift the curtain from his thoughts? The years roll back
and memory’s pictures pass through his brain, at first in joyful train.
The lovers in London; the betrothal at sea; the wedding at
Jerusalem; the ecstatic consummation in years of marriage. Then
the painful, almost awful separation by death, that never to be
forgotten Christmas time. And then, twenty years with leaden feet
carrying the lone-hearted man so painfully slow toward death’s
portals, for which he longed with unutterable yearning. “Oh,
Miriamne, Miriamne, let me come,” he cried. The youth, hearing the
agonized utterings, was instantly by his father’s side. But the old
man, still oblivious to all but his sorrow and his memories, moaned
on with deepening fervor.
“Father,” called out the son. The father rose to his feet and calmly
said: “My boy, pity me. I’m weak. But oh, you never knew what it is
to have your life sawn in twain and be compelled then to drag your
half and lacerated being along the over-clouded vales of an
undesired existence!”
“My mother’s tomb?”
“Yes. I promised, as my last service to you, to bring you to it. Its
study shall be the finish of your schooling.”
Just then the clouds broke away and the moonlight fell full upon
the monument. It was a shaft, terminating in a crucifix; by its side
were two forms, one that of St. John, with face turned toward the
figure of the dying Savior; the other that of a woman kneeling, her
face buried in her hands. On the base of the cross was the brief
sentence: “Behold thy mother.” As the youth gazed on the farewell
charge of Jesus to John, when He commended to the care of that
beloved disciple His sorrowing mother, he started. It seemed as if
the words had grown out of the marble suddenly while he was
gazing, and for himself only. He felt as if he could almost embrace
the stone.
The two men were silent and heart full. After a long time, they
simultaneously turned away toward Bethany. They came to a turn in
the road that would shut out all view of the garden of sorrow, and
the elder paused, loath to leave the place where his heart was
buried.
Presently he spoke again, as if unconscious of any other being
with him: “Oh, Miriamne, I failed to carry out the work thou left’st
me! How could I, alone? I was but half a man without thee, my
other self! Miriamne, Miriamne, I can be only nothing when I can not
be with thee.” Then the old man lifted his hands as in benediction or
embrace, and continued: “Farewell, a last farewell, sweet, white
soul, until upon the tearless, healing shores of light I say good
morning!”
There was a mighty pathos in the display of this old, ripe, strong
grief, which lived on a love that could not die. The man was a study.
He was of fine fibre, almost effeminate, never firm, except in his
affection for that one woman. That was the one strong trend, the
one anchorage of his life. He need not study the man far, who strove
to know him, to discover that this tenacity was not natural to him
always. It had been a growth under the influence of the peerless
wife.
“Shall we go on?” after a little asked the son. With a shudder and
a suppressed sob the elder moved on, but with laggard step, which
soon paused. Just now, the moon being beclouded, it was very dark
about them, and the father reached out his hand and drew the
youth to his embrace. He whispered: “Winfred, son of Miriamne, you
bear her image in your face, bear it ever in heart, as well. I’m glad
you’re not so like me.” The son tried to speak, but the elder
interrupted:
“You’ll ere long be fatherless as well as motherless, but take your
mother for your guiding-star. You know what your birth cost her. By
her death you obtained life, as by the Christ’s, immortality. She
saved others, she could not save herself; but if you’re true to her
memory she’ll have a mother’s immortality, that life that lives in the
life of her child.”
Let us gather up the last threads of our story. After the death of
Miriamne, the “Sisters of Bethany” soon ceased to congregate at the
“House of Bethesda,” in the city on Olivet. Cornelius Woelfkin
attempted for a time to carry forward the work of the mission, but,
utterly miserable himself, he did not know how to bestow comfort on
others; a man, without the intimate companionship of the woman
who had been his inspirer, he had no discernment of the needs of
woman, nor power to interpret the truths that were in the Book or in
nature, those garners of manna.
The Hospitaler was sent for as an aid. He came but once, and
then spoke as kindly as he could to the women of Bethany and
Jerusalem, and took his farewell of them all, in closing words like
these:
“The blessed Miriamne, child of Jesus, and emulator of Mary, has
passed away, but Christ her Comforter and Savior may be such to
each of you, that wills Mary’s example, as the inspiration of all
women, can never die. The world has been a battle-ground, and
each of you can here see over the whole field of conflict. Shall all
pleasures be found under the leadership of Bacchus and Venus, or in
Him that is the God of Joy? Shall woman echo the passions of man
or the ‘Magnificat’ of Mary? Shall the strength that man seeks be
that of the giants, brute force; the strength of woman be, in her
youth the bewitchings of personal beauty, in old age the cunning of
the witch-hag? Shall it not rather be in the girdle of her moral
worth?
“The world needs to seek and find love, beauty and light. Some go
after it, vainly, as did the Egyptian devotees of Phallic Khem; to
whom, with pitiful incongruity, were offered rampant goats and bulls,
decorated with most delicate flowers. They called Khem the ‘God of
births,’ the ‘beautiful God,’ but we know to put mothers on the
throne as the beautiful; their flowers, their jewels, their glories being
their offspring!
“Women of Jerusalem, never forget the Savior’s own words to the
women that envied His mother, crying that the one that bore Him
and nursed Him was therefore peculiarly blessed! His reply was: ‘Yea,
rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.’”
Then the Hospitaler, bending his eyes upon the pale-faced,

widowed missioner, continued: “I’ll tell thee a tradition of our Lord’s
mother. Doubting Thomas, laggard because doubting, came late to
the burial-place of Mary. He begged to have her coffin opened, that
once more he might gaze on the face of his Savior’s mother. It was
done. But there seemed to be nothing in that coffin except lilies and
roses, luxuriously blooming. Then, looking up, he saw the spirit of
the woman ‘soaring heavenward in a glory of light.’ But as she
soared, she threw down to him her girdle. Here is a beautiful
parable. The graves of the holy are to memory full of the ever-
blooming roses of love and the lilies of purity. If we may not have
them we loved with us always, we may have the virtues with which
they engirdled themselves, for our conflicts.”
The Hospitaler paused, cast a glance of yearning tenderness upon
the assembled women and the heart-stricken Cornelius; then
exclaimed:
“Long partings are painful. Farewell!” He glided away ere any
could clasp his hand. Not long after this event the Sheik of
Jerusalem, Azrael’s putative son, raided Bethany, razing the “Temple
of Allegory” to the earth. He was maddened because, after the
disappearance of the Hospitaler, there came to him no stipend to
buy immunity for the “Bethesda House” of the “Sisters of Bethany.”
He despoiled it, hoping to find a treasure therein, but though there
was in and about the place a great wealth, it was all beyond his
grasp or ken, for he knew naught of the worth or power of precious
truths and precious memories. Cornelius, after this, taking his infant
son, soon departed from Syria. His dream of evangelizing the world
and the great designs of Miriamne faded from his hopes, as the
vision of universal empire has faded often from the hopes of dying
conquerors. For years he devoted himself to being father and
mother to his child. At last we behold him, as in the foregoing
pages, looking toward sunset. He stands finally in Bethany, his
dismantled home and Miriamne’s ruined temple not far away, her
tomb close at hand, himself like the fragment of a wreck; altogether
presenting a sad, dramatic tableau. He stands there as the last of
the new “Grail Knights,” the last of those who in his time were
devoted to the new grail quest. It was Saturnalia-time, and it was
night.
“Virgin and Mother of Our Dear Redeemer

...
If our Faith had given Us Nothing More
Than this Example of all Womanhood,
So Mild, so Strong, so Good,
So Patient, Peaceful, Loyal, Loving, Pure,
This Were Enough to Prove It Higher and Truer
Than All the Creeds the World Had Known Before.”
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Jamison.
[2] The Magnificat.
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Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects Central Europe

Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy

From the tetrarchs to the Theodosians later Roman history

Ethics Identity and Community in Later Roman Declamation

Roman Centurions 753 31 BC The Kingdom and the Age of

Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire 1st Edition

Engines of Empire Steamships and the Victorian Imagination

LESLIE S.B. MACCOULL

LESLIE S.B. MACCOULL

Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins:

Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins:

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition © 2011 by R.W. Burgess

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011925098

ISBN 9781409428206 (hbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS984

I The dates and editions of Eusebius’ Chronici canones

II A chronological prolegomenon to reconstructing

III Jerome explained: an introduction to his Chronicle

IV Jerome and the Kaisergeschichte 349–369

V On the date of the Kaisergeschichte 111–128

VI Principes cum tyrannis: two studies on the

VII A common source for Jerome, Eutropius, Festus,

VIII Eutropius v.c. magister memoriae? 76–81

IX Ѡ͔͎͒Ӊ͋LO̯͎͍ҽ͇͍͐͑̓͋? The location and

X The summer of blood: the ‘great massacre’ of 337

XI The Passio S. Artemii, Philostorgius, and the dates

XII The accession of Marcian in the light of Chalcedonian

XIII The third regnal year of Eparchius Avitus: a reply 335–345

XIV Quinquennial vota and the imperial consulship in the

XV ‘Non duo Antonini sed duo Augusti’: the consuls of

Supplementary Notes 1–10

This volume contains xiv + 354 pages

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions,

GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten

PLRE The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vols. 1 and

THE DATES AND EDITIONS OF EUSEBIUS'

The following are cited by short title only:

the Commentary on Luke-must date after 309; see D. S. Wallace-Hadrill,

Literatur 3 (Freiburg, I923), 248-49; Kirsopp Lake, Eusebius. The Ecclesiastical

CHRONIC! CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 473

7 In the Armenian translation of the Chronographia, which is Eusebius' lengthy

introduction to his sources and establishment of the individual chronologies for

CHRONIC! CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 475

Origins of the Christian World Chronicle', in B. Croke and A. M. Emmett (eds.),

before the Onomasticon, dated by Barnes to c.293, which is demonstrably false,

CHRONICI CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 477

19 Jerome's Years of Abraham elsewhere generally agree with those in Pseudo-

Dionysius (J.-B. Chabot (trans.), Chronicon Pseudo-Dionysianum uulgo dictum,

Constantine, have their accessions placed in the correct Olympiad/Seleucid year,

CHRONIC! CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 479

was copied by Eusebius from another work.

6 January 2 nc not 25 December, which is a western tradition.

CHRONIC! CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 481

CHRONIC! CANONES/HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 483