I then outline how the translator refashioned Orosius’s ‘universal history’ into a work of imperial history which is more directly concerned with Rome’s long and difficult rise than with its fall to the Goths in 410. Treating the reports of Ohthere and Wulfstan contained in the geographical preface to the Orosius as an integral part of the text as it was read in the early tenth century, rather than as an extraneous interpolation, I suggest that this passage invites readers to consider the rapidly expanding West Saxon kingdom in relation to the great empires which preceded it. This section of the Chronicle charts both the break-up of the Carolingian Empire and the conquests of Alfred and his successors, Edward the Elder and Æthelstan, over various kings and peoples of Britain. The earliest extant manuscript of the Orosius was probably copied at Winchester in the early tenth century by the same scribe responsible for the entries for the late ninth and early tenth century in MS A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

871–899), can be constructively read in relation to developments in Anglo-Saxon political thought in the early tenth as well as in the late ninth centuries. This article argues that the Old English Orosius, a work traditionally viewed as a product of the educational reforms of King Alfred of Wessex (r. Examining the additions made (and not made) by these scribes from the perspective of genre and literary convention allows a view of the interaction of present and past rather different from, although not incompatible with, the common interpretation of this text as dynastic propaganda. We do, however, possess a text which has been augmented by various scribes, and their additions can be seen as responses to the material before them. The evidence for such readers’ responses is, of course, very limited: the manuscript does not contain exclamations of approval, disgust, or disbelief, much less commentary on literary technique, and we possess no account of who read it or what was thought of it. In the following discussion, I shall address some of the generic and literary conventions displayed in Manuscript A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and explore how Anglo-Saxon readers might have responded to these conventions. By their very nature, therefore, chronicles strikingly demonstrate ways in which past and present impinge on each other.

In theory, at least, chronicles grow by accretion, and their account of the past is the product of many different presents.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle by Various