ABSTRACT
Bede’s first chronicle has received very little attention in its own right and is much maligned in modern scholarship because events are dated by generations or reigns rather than precise years, and it is allegedly poorly designed. Bede’s chronicles both begin with Creation, as did the chronicles of Prosper of Aquitaine and Isidore, whereas the chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome started with Abraham. There are 62 imperial reigns in Bede’s first chronicle and 66 in the second. That Bede named five emperors between 703 and 725 immediately indicates a difference in his imperial chronology. Bede included the emperor, Galerius, who he called Valerius, between Diocletian and Constantine in the first chronicle, but omitted him from the second. Bede followed the traditional narrative of Roman influence on Britain, pieced together from different sources, including Eusebius-Jerome, Orosius and Eutropius. Bede’s second chronicle is a grander presentation of time, chronology and history than his first offering in De temporibus.
