An encyclopedist of the dark ages: Isidore of Seville

by Ernest Brehaut

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.

[49] Disciplinarum Libri IX. Bk. 1. Grammar. Bk. 2. Dialectic. Bk. 3. Rhetoric. Bk. 4. Geometry. Bk. 5. Arithmetic. Bk. 6. Astrology. Bk. 7. Music. Bk. 8. Medicine. Bk. 9. Architecture. (Conjectural list of disciplines given by Ritschl, Opusc. 3, p. 312.)

[50] Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii.

[51] See [p. 91].

[52] E.g. Suetonius, Prata.

[53] See pp. [106], [114].

[54] Dressel, De Isidori Originum Fontibus, in Rivista di filologia, 1874–75, discusses Isidore’s method of using his sources, and gives a list of writers and works to which he traces passages in Isidore, giving usually a list of the latter. The writers include Sallust, Justinus, Hegesippus, Orosius, Pliny, Solinus, the abridger of Vitruvius, Lucretius, Hyginus, Cassiodorus, Servius, the scholia on Lucan.