[315] A list of heresies precedes.
[316] Du Breul, hominum instead of omnium.
[317] Reading secreta for decreta.
[318] Verg. Aen. 4, 487–491, not quoted directly but taken from Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 21, 6.
[319] From Augustine, De Civitate Dei, bk. vii. cap. 35.
[320] The reference is to heathen gods.
[321] Isidore gives a table of “the prohibited degrees” within which marriage was forbidden by the rule of the church. Since the introduction of Christianity these had been steadily extended until in Isidore’s lifetime intermarriage within the seventh degree was prohibited by Pope Gregory. The analogy between the wide extension of “the prohibited degrees” in the dark ages and that found among primitive peoples generally is remarkable. Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 297, says: “As a rule among primitive peoples unaffected by modern civilization, the prohibited degrees are more numerous than in advanced communities, the prohibitions in many cases referring even to all the members of a tribe or clan.” For an account of this development of marriage, see Westermarck, op. cit., p. 308, and Smith and Cheetham’s Christian Antiquities, art. “Prohibited Degrees.” This social phenomenon of the dark ages is a development parallel to the recrudescence of the primitive in the intellectual sphere which is illustrated in so marked a manner in the Etymologies (cf. pp. 50–54).
[322] Corporaliter.
[323] The names of the nations are enumerated in the preceding sections.
[324] The name China appeared for the first time in the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. It does not appear in the Etymologies.
[325] This is the only part of the Etymologies in which Isidore gives up every principle of organization of his subject-matter except the alphabetical one. Elsewhere the terms are grouped according to their meaning, with sometimes traces of alphabetical order in the groups, but here the dictionary method alone is used.
[326] Grandson, sometimes has meaning of prodigal, spendthrift.
[327] In the first part of book xi are contained the remnants of the sciences of human anatomy and physiology as the ancients had known them. The second part is devoted to unnatural births, which were regarded as having a prophetic meaning, and to monstrous races. It is not known what were Isidore’s immediate sources for bk. xi. Most of the natural science of the later Roman empire, however, was drawn ultimately from Pliny. To correspond to Isidore’s topics in this book of the Etymologies, comparative anatomy and physiology are found in Pliny’s Natural History, bk. xi, ch. 44 et seq., and chapters on monstrous races (Gentium mirabiles figurae) and on unusual and unnatural births (prodigiosi, monstruosi partus) are found in bk. vii.
[328] Vult.
[329] Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 166.
[330] Cuvier, vol. i, p. 264.
[331] The Physiologus probably originated at Alexandria in the first century A.D., and was translated into the Latin about the end of the fourth century. It was very popular with the church fathers. Isidore’s De Animalibus exhibits its influence in many passages. See Lauchert, Physiologus (Strassburg, 1891), p. 103. A Greek version of the Physiologus is given by Lauchert and a Latin by Cahier in Mélanges d’Archéologie, Paris, vols. ii, iii, iv (1851–53).
[332] Superacta pernicie veneni.
[333] The Greek is μῦς.
[334] A notion found in the Physiologus.
[335] This animal is of literary origin and illustrates the danger of a literary science. For some reason the Septuagint translators translated the Hebrew word for lion in Job 4:11 by the word μυρμηκολέων. The commentators later on, in their efforts to explain the term, evolved a new animal, a compound of ant and lion. See Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, p. 21, and art. “Physiologus” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.
[336] Aranea, vermis aeris, 12, 5, 2.
[337] ἔχω, ναῦς.
[338] Cornix is not a Greek word, as Isidore seems to imply. Its nearest Greek equivalent is κορώνη.
[341] ὕλη.
[342] I.e., elementa = hylementa.
[343] The word στοιχεῖον means “one in a series.”
[344] Orbis.
[345] Orbem.
[346] Terrae.
[347] Opem fert frugibus.
[349] Romphaea flamma. Cf. Etym., 18, 6, 3.
[350] Egypt is regarded as part of Asia. 14, 3, 27–28.
[351] Extra tres autem partes orbis, quarta pars trans Oceanum interior est in Meridie.
[353] Architecture appears in a disintegrated form in the Etymologies (bks. xv, chs. 2–12; xix, chs. 8–19). A comparison with Vitruvius’s work on architecture (translated by J. Gwilt, London, 1880) shows that the main differences between the subjects treated by Isidore and those in Vitruvius’s work lie in the omission by the former of the account of building materials (bk. ii), temple architecture, water supply (bk. viii), dialling, and mechanics.
[354] See Introd., p. 32. The two chapters, “De Mensuris Agrorum” and “De Itineribus,” together with three chapters of bk. xvi, “De Ponderibus,” “De Mensuris,” “De Signis,” are given in Hultsch, Metrologicorum Scriptorum Reliquiae, Leipzig, 1886 (Scriptores Romani in vol. ii). Hultsch finds (vol. ii, 34) that Isidore made use of Columella and a number of minor writers on these subjects.
[355] Isidore probably had in mind some derivation of Byzantium, which would explain his meaning here, but he gives no hint of what it was.
[356] Saragossa.
[357] Pliny’s five books (xxxiii-xxxvii) on mineralogy in his Natural History are the chief source upon which later writers drew. An epitome of them, or rather, an epitome of an epitome, was made by Solinus in the third century. This underwent a further revision in the sixth century. Isidore is supposed to have used both the epitome and the original, as well as an unknown source, from which he drew the medical virtues of the precious stones. Cf. King, The Natural History, Ancient and Modern, of Precious Stones (London, 1865), p. 6.
[358] Asphalt, alum, salt, soda, etc.
[359] Striped jasper.
[360] Unknown.
[361] Twenty-one of these are named.
[362] The information on military matters contained here and in bk. ix was drawn ultimately from the succession of Roman writers on military science. The chief of these were Frontinus, Hyginus, Vegetius.
[363] The title, De Spectaculis, and much of the material are drawn from Tertullian’s De Spectaculis. See M. Klussman, Excerpta Tertullianea in Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiis (Hamburg, 1892).
[364] Compare Tertullian, De Spectaculis, chs. 6–9.
[365] At this point in his work Isidore turns from the ‘sciences’ to the useful arts.
[366] For a similar subject and treatment, compare De Genere Navigiorum, in Nonius Marcellus’s encyclopedia. See p. 43.
[367] For passages illustrating Isidore’s cosmology, see Etym., 2, 24, 2; 3, 52, 1; 3, 47; 9, 2, 133; 11, 3, 24; 13, 1, 1. See also pp. 50–58 and notes.
[369] 2, 24, 10–16.
[370] Diff., 2, 39.
[371] The list given here is not a complete list of works consulted. The wide range of topics included in Isidore’s encyclopedia has made it necessary to consult a great many books, and the great modern encyclopedias have been used continuously, especially the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.