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directly on such sources. Under the influence of Origen’s Hexapla, Eusebius also sepa-
rated out material from different national histories into separate columns, establishing
synchronisms among the different histories of different nations. Whereas the Olym-
piad chronicle had a single axis, time, the Chronici Canones had two overlapping axes,
kingdom and time, or kingdom through time. Eusebius completed the final and most
influential version of the Chronici Canones in 326, setting out all known world history
from the birth of Abraham (in our 2016 BC) to AD 325. Moving from double-page
spreads depicting as many as nine separate national histories, the Canones eventually
devolved to the single column of annual Roman history. The Canones thus espoused
a teleological view of the past, running from Abraham - who was, for Eusebius, the
first Christian - to the Christianization of the world as a whole under the victorious
Constantine. As a by-product of this illustration of divine providence, Eusebius had
produced the first universal synchronism of world history ever written.21
The complexity and sheer expense of Eusebius’ columnar structure made copying
his Canones difficult, and his refusal to accept the standard date of 5500 for the birth
of Christ and its profound eschatological significance, meant that his chronology was
almost immediately attacked and modified. As a result, intact versions of his work that
respected the original format and chronology seem not to have survived the fourth
century. Instead, Eusebius’ lasting influence came by way of a translation into Latin,
made by the presbyter Jerome in AD 380-1, and into Syriac, at least twice beginning
in the fifth century. Jerome probably first discovered the Canones in Antioch, and set
about translating it upon his move to Constantinople in 380, where he had access to
additional material on Roman history and literature. Along with the translation and
augmentation of Eusebius’ Greek text, Jerome added material for the years between
325 and his own terminus of 378. His chronicle was completed before the end of May
381 and it offered Latin readers a text that for the first time placed Rome in a universal
Mediterranean context. For many readers, that innovation was as important as his
placing of Roman history within a Christian context.22 With Jerome, the Greek and
Hellenistic tradition of universal chronicling came to provide the Latin West with
both its main genre for writing history and also its chief source of ancient history for
nearly a millennium to come. Equally, Jerome’s Latin chronicle tradition at first ran
parallel with, and then swallowed up, the old tradition of Latin consularia.
The earliest evidence for written consularia after the end of the Fasti Ostienses in
the last quarter of the second century appears in a recension of the Descriptio consulum
first written down at Trier in 342, but it contains fossils of older consularia detectable
in discrete blocks of text. From Trier, it was taken to Rome and then Constantinople,
where it was actively compiled from at least 356. By 370, it began to produce a variety
of eastern descendants in both Latin and in Greek translation, which later inspired
continuations of their own. A Latin recension was brought back to the West late in 388
by Achantia, widow of the praetorian prefect Maternus Cynegius, and copies of this
21 Burgess/Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, pp. 119-31.
22 Burgess/Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, pp. 173—87.