The Preface to the Translation of Eusebius’s Chronicon and the Evolution of Jerome’s Translation Theory

Abstract: Eusebius’s lost Chronicon was a summary in Greek of the history of the Greeks and barbarians from Abraham’s birth. Eusebius’s work is in part preserved by Jerome, whose Chronicon offers a translation of the early part of Eusebius’s up to the capture of Troy and thereafter mixes translation and additions until Eusebius’s terminus in 325 ce ; this second part is largely enriched with notes composed by Jerome himself, most of which concern Roman history and are often drawn from Suetonius. A third part is entirely new to Jerome: it extends Eusebius’s work to 378 ce . The Chronicon belongs to a specific genre: the informative text of a historical nature, which the translator considers legitimate to rectify, “improve,” or update. We are at the border between translation, compilation, research, synthesis, and personal elaboration. This article argues for the importance of the praefatio of the Chronicon , in which he explains and justifies his methodology, as his first explicit statement on his principles of translation, long before he was to make his more famous pronouncements in his confrontation with Rufinus. It traces how the preface sets a foundation for the translation theory that emerges later in Jerome’s career, especially in some other prefaces and the letters 106 and 57.