first three books), the synopsis of history, the elements of religious knowledge, the legal and medical sections, useful as they were, could usually be studied in less compendious form. In the compilation of the Etymologiae a library of very considerable extent was laid under contribution. Much is derived, no doubt, from hand-books: it is not to be supposed that Isidore possessed the works of an Ennius, a Cinna, a Livius Andronicus, all of whom he cites. These passages lay ready to his hand in the form of excerpts in various grammatical and critical books, especially in the commentary of Servius on the Aeneid. But, when due allowance has been made for the use of compilations, it is apparent that the range of authors with whom he had a first-hand acquaintance is not despicable. Lucretius, often cited in the later books (though of course seldom in comparison with Lucan and Virgil), was known to him. The Histories of Sallust and the Pratum (and some minor works) of Suetonius are probably the most important of the lost secular works (excluding manuals of rhetoric and grammar) which he can be shown to have used. From the De Republica of Cicero he makes but one short citation. It is not apparent that he possessed any specimen of the earliest Christian literature which we do not possess: in his continuation of the literary biographies of Jerome and Gennadius he tells us of many theological writers in his own time who are no more than names to us.
His knowledge of Greek has been doubted, and, I think, with reason. The evidence for it is almost confined to citations of Greek words to furnish etymologies. It cannot be shown that he either owned Greek books or translated from Greek authors for the purpose of his work.
Had he lived long enough to provide the Etymologiae with its prologue, it is likely enough that after the manner of the elder Pliny he would have given us the list of the authors on whom he had drawn. As it is, we have to base our estimate of the extent of his library upon a document which leaves a good deal to the imagination. We have the verses which were painted (probably) on the cornices or doors of his book-presses. Each of these cupboards, in accordance with a fashion attested by a good deal of archaeological evidence, seems to have been ornamented with a medallion portrait of a famous author, whose worth was celebrated in one or more elegiac couplets. The number of sections or tituli warrants us in reckoning that Isidore owned at least fourteen and perhaps sixteen presses, and we shall be safe in assuming that at this date the contents were in book-form (codices) and not rolls (volumina). Taking the number of books in each press at 30 – not an unreasonable estimate – we reach the very respectable total of 420 or 480 for the whole collection. As to the contents, the tituli suggest that theology predominated. The secular writers named are few (jurists and physicians) and there is nothing to suggest the presence of works now lost. That
