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.