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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
Columbanus (543-615) in Ireland and Gaul was the
contemporary of Cassiodorus (490-585) in Ravenna and
Squillace. Cassiodorus, who showed a twofold devotion
to the Christian and heathen classics, peculiar in that
age to Irish scholars almost alone, was the contemporary
in the East of the Emperor Justinian and of Priscian, and
in the West of Odoacer, successor to Romulus Augustus,
the last Roman emperor, and Boethius "the last of the
Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged
1
for their countrymen." Boethius and Cassiodorus were
the final representatives of Roman learning as Colum-
banus was one of the first representatives of Irish learning
in Gaul and Italy. 2 Thus the affiliation of Irish culture
with the ancient Greek and Roman cultures is as visible
and authentic as the position, revealed by Zeuss,
of the
Irish language in the inner shrine of the Indo-European
group as sister to Latin and Greek. The Teutonic wedge
of barbarism, thrust in the fifth century into a triple asso-
ciation that had been maturing for centuries, while it
seriously impaired, did not destroy the continuity in the
tradition of civilization.
i Gibbon, Bury's, IV, 197-204, C. 395.
* The activity of the continental Celt in Roman literature began early.
Virgil was a native of Gallia Cisalpina his name is cognate with the Irish
Fearghil, anglicized Farrell. Livy, Catullus, Cornelius Nepos, the elder and
younger Pliny, Domitius Afer, Marcus Aper, Pavorinus, Ausonius, Numantianus,
Sulpicius Severus, Sidonius Appollinarius were other Gauls or Celts
who attained fame in Latin letters. The Celts also gave Rome several of its
emperors Claudius, Caracalla, Antoninus, Galba, Otto, Vitellus, Vespasian,
Domitian, and Maximus, this last a Briton. The Celtic tongue died out in
Gaul in the fourth century, but St. Jerome intimates that the Galatians in Asia
Minor still spoke it in his day: "While the Galatians in common with the
whole East speak Greek, their own language is almost identical with that
of the Treviri." (Pref. Book II, Comment, on Galatians.)