Chronology

c. 3000 B.C.

Stone Age settlers begin to construct elaborate Irish passage-graves such as Newgrange.

900s

In Greece, Homer composes Iliad and Odyssey.

753

Founding of the City of Rome.

400–300

Greece’s Golden Age: the flowering of Athenian democracy under Pericles; the time of Sophocles, Phidias, Socrates, Plato, et al.

390

Celts invade the City of Rome for the first and last time.

c. 350

Celtic tribes cross to Ireland and settle there, displacing earlier inhabitants.

70 B.C.–A.D. 14

Rome’s Golden Age: the time of Cicero, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, et al.

31 B.C.

Octavian becomes first Roman emperor and takes the name Caesar Augustus.

c. A.D. 100

Medb is queen of Connacht in Ireland.

370

The teenaged Augustine goes to Carthage.

c. 395

Death of Ausonius.

401

Patricius is taken into slavery; Augustine publishes his Confessions.

406–7

Largest Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire.

409

Roman garrison abandons Britain.

410

Alaric the Goth sacks the City of Rome.

430

Death of Augustine at Hippo.

432

Bishop Patrick arrives in Ireland.

461

Death of Patrick.

475–76

Reign of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor, who is deposed by the barbarian Odoacer; end of the Roman Empire in the west.

c. 500

Brigid founds Kildare.

557

Columcille leaves Ireland for Iona.

c. 590

Columbanus leaves for Gaul.

597

Death of Columcille; Augustine, the papal librarian, baptizes the English king of Kent at Canterbury.

615

Columbanus dies at Bobbio.

635

Aidan founds Lindisfarne.

664

Synod of Whitby.

782

Alcuin takes over direction of Charlemagne’s Palatine School.

793

First Viking attack on Lindisfarne.

c. 845

John Scotus Eriugena arrives at the court of Charles the Bald.

875

The monks abandon Lindisfarne for the last time.

1014

Vikings are defeated decisively by the forces of Brian Boru at the Battle of Clontarf.

1170

Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.

1556

Elizabethan plantation of Ireland begins.

1649

Cromwell arrives in Ireland and begins his massacres of Catholics.

1690

Battle of the Boyne: the Catholic (and Stuart) cause is decisively lost to the victorious William of Orange; the flight of the Wild Geese, the Irish nobility, begins soon after.

1692

Catholics are excluded from office for the first time.

1695

Penal Laws are enacted, depriving Catholics of civil rights.

1829

Daniel O’Connell, “the Liberator” and masterful Irish politician, forces Catholic Emancipation on the British Parliament.

1845

Famine. Massive emigrations begin.

1893

Douglas Hyde founds Gaelic League to revive Irish culture.

1904

William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory found the Abbey Theatre. James Joyce leaves Ireland.

1916

Easter Rising. Irish Republic proclaimed.

1919–21

Irish War of Independence.

1922

Britain and Ireland sign treaty establishing the Irish Free State, but excluding the six counties of Northern Ireland still under British rule. Ulysses published.

1923

Yeats takes his seat in the first Irish Senate and is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.