These encyclopedias are pervaded by a tone of literary scholarship. It was a peculiarity of Latin literature that philology was almost as old as poetry. The Roman poetry was a mere reflection of the Greek, the poets invariably knowing Greek and either translating from it or following Greek models. Poetry so produced was inevitably artificial and in need of elucidation. These conditions favored the rapid growth of criticism; grammar, word derivation, philology, antiquarian history were favorite studies from early times, engaging the attention even of leading Romans. There was even a sort of literary science; for example, Varro’s geography, which was meant to include the geographical allusions of the poets. A mass of scholarly lore was thus accumulated and this soon became unwieldy. It was the function of Varro and Verrius Flaccus especially to reduce this mass to order and to bring it into such shape that it could be referred to readily. To effect the latter object Verrius Flaccus introduced the method of alphabetical arrangement, using this for the first time in his great work De Verborum Significatu. These two writers gave, then, in their encyclopedic works a survey of the apparatus for literary criticism, including a sort of literary science, and the whole succession of encyclopedic writers was greatly influenced by the example which they set.
In the works of Pliny and Suetonius, who followed Varro and Verrius Flaccus, natural science is brought into the foreground. The change, however, was but slight. The natural science of the Romans was anything but scientific; neither experiment, systematic observation, nor research had ever been practiced among them. Their science was an affair of books and was of an authoritative character. Even the poets were looked upon as possessing scientific knowledge and were seriously quoted to maintain scientific theses. There was no real distinction between the natural and philological sciences of the time, and therefore the encyclopedia of literary criticism was closely allied with that of natural science.
As illustrating the character of the encyclopedias it is worth while to notice more fully the method by which they were produced. As has been suggested, Roman scholars and scientists under the Empire were little more than note-takers. Pliny the Elder is the typical example of this tendency; a student of extraordinary diligence, his study consisted in reading, making extracts, and compiling them. Such was the origin of his Natural History. He left to his nephew, in addition, the legacy of “one hundred and sixty common-place books, written on both sides of the scroll and in very small hand-writing”.[47] The full effect of the tendency thus illustrated cannot be perceived, however, if we think merely of the process as it was carried on by Pliny, for he consulted chiefly original works; when, later, extracts began to be made from works that were themselves compiled from extracts, when epitomes began to be epitomized, a state of confusion and feebleness of thought inevitably ensued. This is the condition which is exemplified in the two latest of the Roman encyclopedists, Pompeius Festus and Nonius Marcellus, and the tradition is continued in Isidore.
The body of knowledge gathered together under all these influences possessed little of a positive nature. It was informed by no general ideas of a striking character and it entirely lacked the element of reasoned proof. Since its science was a science of authority, it was easy for the Christian writers to modify it by substituting the authority of the Scriptures for that of pagan writers. In fact, the encyclopedias furnished to the church fathers secular knowledge in a particularly convenient and unobjectionable form. Augustine, especially, made great use of Varro. It can be seen that this literary form was better adapted than any other to pass with unbroken continuity from ancient into medieval literature.
It is then to the succession of Roman encyclopedists that we must go to explain the method, spirit, and content of Isidore’s Etymologies. A comparison of the organization of the material and of the sub-titles of Isidore’s work with those of the Roman writers,[48] so far as they are known, shows the extent of his indebtedness. The literary and philological flavor, the stress on word history and derivation, the pseudo-science based on authority, the conspicuous tendency to confusion and feebleness of thought, the habit of heedless copying that we find in an aggravated form in the Etymologies, all these are inherited characteristics that betray the origin of the work.
But though the example which was furnished by the Roman encyclopedists was by far the strongest literary factor which influenced Isidore in the composition of the Etymologies, it was not the only one of importance. A minor type of encyclopedia, that of education, occurs in Latin literature. The first example of it is furnished by Varro in his Disciplinarum Libri IX;[49] this work had, however, disappeared before Isidore’s time. Varro found no successor until the fourth century, when Martianus Capella wrote his account of the seven liberal arts,[50] giving thus a comprehensive treatment of the subject-matter of education. He was followed in the sixth century by Cassiodorus, whose De Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum Isidore certainly had before him when he wrote the account of the seven liberal arts which occupies the first three books of the Etymologies. Isidore’s work therefore appears to be a fusion of the minor encyclopedia of education and the major encyclopedia of all knowledge.
We are now in a position to form a clearer judgment of the personal element which Isidore contributed to the composition of the Etymologies. It is worth while in the first place to point out that the essentials of the work are derived from the pagan, not the Christian, side of the Latin tradition. This in itself showed a commendable initiative, considering that it was the age of Gregory the Great. It was Isidore’s function to adjust the secular learning thus obtained to a new and lower level of thought and to the Christian philosophy of the time. The way in which this was accomplished constitutes the only original element in the treatment of the subject-matter. The adjustment was secured partly by an amalgamation of the pseudo-science of the church fathers with that found in the encyclopedic writings, and by the inclusion of the three books which deal with religious matters, but chiefly by the new spirit in which secular knowledge was conceived. The works of Pliny and Suetonius were surveys of what was known; that of Isidore was a survey of “what ought to be known”. For his age secular knowledge was valuable, not for itself, but for edification. In theory, at least, it was Isidore’s notion that such knowledge might “avail for life if applied to the better uses”.
The question of the actual sources used by Isidore in the Etymologies and in his other works of a secular nature is a difficult one. The literary tradition of the period preceding his, which was mainly a time of compiling and epitomizing, is so complicated and confused that the student cannot be certain, when he finds the exact wording of a writer in the work of another who preceded him, that the former has borrowed from the latter. Both may have borrowed from another source or even from two different sources identical as respects the passage in question.[51] In the task of ascertaining Isidore’s sources the difficulties already enumerated are increased by the loss of important works upon which it is pretty certain that he drew,[52] and also by his habit of quoting the sources quoted by his authorities as if they were his own.[53]
However, although there has been no thorough-going investigation of this question, much has been accomplished by students interested in sections of the Etymologies, such, for example, as those on music and law. Classical scholars also have investigated his sources in a more general way, but their efforts have been not so much directed to the elucidation of Isidore himself as inspired by the hope of recovering some fragments of the classical authors. The varying conclusions reached show that no great certainty has been attained, but it is possible to give a tentative list of sources which will indicate roughly the nature of the influences which contributed to form Isidore’s ideas.[54] It seems probable that his working library contained works of the following authors: Lactantius, Tertullian, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Orosius, Cassiodorus, Suetonius, Pliny, Solinus, Hyginus, Sallust, Hegesippus, the abridger of Vitruvius, Servius, the scholia on Lucan, and Justinus.