[349] Romphaea flamma. Cf. Etym., 18, 6, 3.
[350] Egypt is regarded as part of Asia. 14, 3, 27–28.
[351] Extra tres autem partes orbis, quarta pars trans Oceanum interior est in Meridie.
[353] Architecture appears in a disintegrated form in the Etymologies (bks. xv, chs. 2–12; xix, chs. 8–19). A comparison with Vitruvius’s work on architecture (translated by J. Gwilt, London, 1880) shows that the main differences between the subjects treated by Isidore and those in Vitruvius’s work lie in the omission by the former of the account of building materials (bk. ii), temple architecture, water supply (bk. viii), dialling, and mechanics.
[354] See Introd., [p. 32]. The two chapters, “De Mensuris Agrorum” and “De Itineribus,” together with three chapters of bk. xvi, “De Ponderibus,” “De Mensuris,” “De Signis,” are given in Hultsch, Metrologicorum Scriptorum Reliquiae, Leipzig, 1886 (Scriptores Romani in vol. ii). Hultsch finds (vol. ii, 34) that Isidore made use of Columella and a number of minor writers on these subjects.
[355] Isidore probably had in mind some derivation of Byzantium, which would explain his meaning here, but he gives no hint of what it was.
[356] Saragossa.
[357] Pliny’s five books (xxxiii-xxxvii) on mineralogy in his Natural History are the chief source upon which later writers drew. An epitome of them, or rather, an epitome of an epitome, was made by Solinus in the third century. This underwent a further revision in the sixth century. Isidore is supposed to have used both the epitome and the original, as well as an unknown source, from which he drew the medical virtues of the precious stones. Cf. King, The Natural History, Ancient and Modern, of Precious Stones (London, 1865), p. 6.