Note 48 — Chapter II
Reading edition
An outline of the contents of leading encyclopædic works, so far as known, is here given for purposes of comparison with the contents of the Etymologies.
Marcus Terentius Varro, 116–28 B.C.
Antiquitatum Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum Libri XLI.
Rerum Humanarum Libri XXV.
Bk. 1. Introduction.
2–7. de hominibus.
8–13. de locis (8, Rome; 11, Italy; 12, remaining Europe; 13, Asia and Africa).
14–19. de temporibus (14, introduction; 15, de saeculis; 16, de lustris; 17, de annis; 18, de mensibus; 19, de diebus).
20–25. de rebus.
Rerum Divinarum Libri XVI.
Bk. 26. Introduction.
27–29. de hominibus.
30–32. de locis.
33–35. de temporibus.
36–38. de rebus.
38–41. de diis.
This encyclopedia stands for the interests of the scholarly antiquarian rather than for those of the man interested in natural science. The work itself is lost, but the nature of its contents is fairly well known, thanks to St. Augustine. For further information regarding Varro’s encyclopedic works, see Boissier, Étude sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Varron, Paris, 1861; and Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, Martin Schanz, München, 1909, Erster Teil, Zweite Hälfte, 187, 188.
Verrius Flaccus (flourished under Augustus).
De Verborum Significatu.
The work itself has been lost, as also the greater part of the abbreviation of it to twenty books made by Pompeius Festus before 200 A.D. Festus’s abridgement was further abridged by Paulus Diaconus in Charlemagne’s time. It is regarded as certain that material in Isidore’s Etymologies came directly or indirectly from the De Verborum Significatu. Nettleship, Lectures and Essays, Oxford, 1885.
Pliny the Elder (23–79 A.D.).
Naturalis Historiae Libri XXXVII.
Bk. 1. Contents and lists of sources.
2. Description of the universe.
3–6. Geography.
7. Man.
8. Animals.
9. Fishes.
10. Birds.
11. Insects.
12–27. Trees, shrubs, plants, including medicinal botany.
27–32. Medicinal zoölogy.
32–37. Metals, colors, stones, and gems, especially from the artist’s point of view.
Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus, pp. 243–247, in Rivista di filologia, 1874–75, gives an incomplete list of Isidore’s borrowings from Pliny. He points out Isidore’s carelessness in borrowing in one case where he shows that what Pliny tells us of the echineis, Isidore hastily assigns to the mullus. Cf. Isidore 12, 6, 25, with Pliny, 32; 8, 9, 70, 138–39.
Suetonius Tranquillus (last of first century and first half of second).
Prata.
This work is lost. It was an encyclopedia in at least ten books, of which the titles of some books and fragments have been recovered, a large portion of them from the Etymologies and De Natura Rerum. Among the subjects were leges, mores, tempora, mundus, animantium naturae. Isidore quotes Suetonius twice. See A. Reifferscheid, C. Suetoni Tranquilli Reliquiae, Leipzig, 1860, pp. 155 et seq., and Schanz, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, Dritter Teil, pp. 47–66.
Nonius Marcellus (early fourth century).
Compendiosa Doctrina ad Filium.
Bks. 1–12. Grammatical in character, including one book, (5) De Differentia Similium Significationum.
13. de genere navigiorum.
14. de genere vestimentorum.
15. de genere vasorum vel poculorum.
16. de genere calciamentorum.
17. de coloribus vestimentorum.
18. de genere ciborum vel potorum.
19. de genere armorum.
20. de propinquitatum vocabulis.
This work is, in part, in dictionary form (Bks. 1–6). There is much resemblance between passages in Nonius Marcellus and in the Etymologies, which Nettleship believes to be due to the use of a common source. Nettleship, “Nonius Marcellus,” in Lectures and Essays. Lindsay, Nonius Marcellus, Oxford, 1901.