Note 951 — Chapter VIII · THE WATERS

“Navim non patitur, quinimo tota supereminet nisi sit bituminata, et hoc forte propter homines intus viventes. Siquis vivum aliqua arte immiserit statim super exilit” (loc. cit.). Gervase seems here to have derived from Bede (De locis sanctis, 12, in Tobler, Itinera, vol. i, 1877, pp. 227–228) a hazy conception of the actual properties of the waters of the Dead Sea. The opposite theory, however, had been expressed by Antonius Martyr two centuries earlier than Bede: “Nor do sticks float, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast into it sinks to the bottom” (White, Warfare, 1920, vol. ii, p. 228).