t
necessitated to give our kings "a gross of centuries apiece," or to
divide the assumed period of a reign between half-a-dozen monarchs;[67]
and the difficulties are merely such as might be expected before
chronology had become a science. The Four Masters have adopted the
chronology of the Septuagint; but O'Flaherty took the system of
Scaliger, and thus reduced the dates by many hundred years. The
objection of hostile critics has been to the history rather than to the
chronology of the history; but these objections are a mere _petitio
principii_. They cannot understand how Ireland could have had a
succession of kings and comparative civilization,--in fact, a national
existence,--from 260 years before the building of Rome, when the
Milesian colony arrived, according to the author of the _Ogygia_, at
least a thousand years before the arrival of Caesar in Britain, and his
discovery that its inhabitants were half-naked savages. The real
question is not what Caesar said of the Britons, nor whether they had an
ancient history before their subjugation by the victorious cohorts of
Rome; but whether the annals which contained the pre-Christian history
of Ireland may be accepted as, in the main, authentic.

We have already given some account of the principal works from which our
annals may be compiled. Before we proceed to that portion of our history
the authenticity of which cannot be questioned, it may, perhaps, be
useful to give an idea of the authorities for the minor details of
social life, the individual incidents of a nation's being, which, in
fact, make up the harmonious whole. We shall find a remarkable
coincidence between the materials for early Roman history, and those for
the early history of that portion of the Celtic race which colonized
Ireland.

We have no trace of any historical account of Roman history by a
contemporary writer, native or foreign, before the war with Pyrrhus; yet
we have a history of Rome for more than four hundred years previous
offered to us by classical writers[68], as a trustworthy narrative of
events. From whence did they derive their reliable information?
Unquestionably from works such as the _Origines_ of Cato the Censor, and
other writers, which were then extant, but which have since perished.
And these writers, whence did they obtain their historical narratives?
If we may credit the theory of Niebuhr,[69] they were transmitted simply
by bardic legends, composed in verse. Even Sir G.C.