borrowed thence by Virgilius, has failed to convince me that Virgilius, and not Isidore, is the borrower. Practically all the passages contain derivations of words (legitera=littera and the like). They are thoroughly germane to the manner of Virgilius; nor is it a consideration of any weight that Isidore nowhere names Virgilius as his source, for in this respect his practice is by no means consistent. In short, though it may be shewn on other grounds that Zimmer has placed Virgilius too early, I cannot think that his theory is invalidated by the appeal to Isidore; and I feel justified in provisionally adopting his date.
Ireland has been named, and will for a time engage our whole attention; but before we leave France and Virgilius, a word must be said of a book which has perhaps a claim to be regarded as a product of his school. At least it reminds us of him by its language and by its solen absurdity. The work in question is the Cosmography of "Aethicus Ister." I use inverted commas because it is not certain that the form "Aethicus" is what was intended by the author of the text, who may have meant to write "Ethicus" and have used that word as a synonym for "philosopher." The Cosmography comes to us in the shape of an abstract or series of extracts from a larger work, purporting to have been made by St Jerome (or at least by a "Hieronymus presbyter"). In spite of the efforts of Wuttke to uphold this attribution and to identify the places and peoples who are mentioned, it is not possible to regard Aethicus as anything but a romancer or to put him earlier than the seventh century. His wild Latin, full of hapax legomena, elaborate alliteration and short assonant clauses, his fables about countries, tribes, and creatures, partly borrowed from Solinus and the Alexander-romances, but largely peculiar to himself, and his display of absurd learning (exemplified by the bogus Scythian alphabet with which he ends his book), all stamp him as a charlatan. He probably wrote in France: it seems that the first writer who quotes him is Frankish – one of the continuators of the chronicler who is called Fredegarius.
At the same time, it would be no surprise to learn that he had Irish connexions. Indeed, definite allusions to Ireland have been pointed out in his writings and in those of Virgilius. Aethicus represents himself as having crossed from Spain to Ireland, and having studied the books (eorum volumina volvens) which he found there (a phrase which may reasonably be taken to imply that Ireland enjoyed a reputation for culture in his time)[1]. The two passages adduced from Virgilius are both of doubtful import. One says that in the composition and elocution of the ... the verb holds the first place. The statement is true of Irish, and the word represented by dots is given in the manuscripts as hi bonorum, hiborum, in iborum, respectively. The conjecture Hibernorum lies ready to hand; yet the possibility of Hiberorum or Iberorum must
- ↑ For all that, he says of the island "Inperitos habet cultores, et instructoribus habet destitutos habitatores." (p. 19, Wuttke.)
