“Let not the tipsy Bacchus cast his fetters upon you, nor, noxious, wipe out the lessons engraved on your minds. Nor let that wicked Cretan boy, armed with piercing darts, drive you from the citadel of safety.”
The conversion of Arno into Aquila was very natural to a Yorkshireman. In several cases we can only guess at the Teutonic names which Alcuin translated into Latin; for example, Gallicellulus (Ep. 260). In two cases, at least, he translates into Greek. Cambridge men who remember with much affection their private tutor in Mathematics, William Walton, will remember his skill in thus rendering names; his Prosgennades still survives, known to the world as Atkinson. With Alcuin, Hechstan becomes Altapetra. The abbess Adaula evidently had a Teutonic name. Anthropos was his friend Monna. Stratocles had some such name as Heribercht. Epistle 282 is addressed, very near the end of his life, “to my best-loved friends in Christ, brother and son, Anthropos and Stratocles, the humble levite Alchuine sends greeting.” Epistle 283, of the same late date, is addressed “to my dearest son Altapetra, the levite Albinus sends greeting”. In the course of this letter to Hechstan, Alcuin sends greetings and requests for prayers to two friends whose names would not fall very easily into Latin, Scaest and Baegnod, the latter a common Anglo-Saxon name, usually in the form Beagnoth, with the final d aspirated. It occurs in runes on a knife in the British Museum, and is found in Kent and Wessex.
CHAPTER XVII
Grammatical questions submitted to Alcuin by Karl.—Alcuin and Eginhart.—Eginhart’s description of Charlemagne.—Alcuin’s interest in missions.—The premature exaction of tithes.—Charlemagne’s elephant Abulabaz.—Figures of elephants in silk stuffs.—Earliest examples of French and German.—Boniface’s Abrenuntiatio Diaboli.—Early Saxon.—The earliest examples of Anglo-Saxon prose and verse.
In many of Alcuin’s letters we find answers or allusions to questions addressed to him by Karl. In Epistle 253 Alcuin writes twelve paragraphs to the emperor in answer to twelve questions. In Epistle 252 he writes to Homer (Angilbert), who has been commanded by the emperor to consult him on the gender of the word rubus and on the difference in meaning of despicere and dispicere. In regard to rubus, he sums up a long list of authorities on both sides by the correct remark that a bramble must not be counted as a tree, and therefore rubus follows the ordinary rule of words ending in us and is masculine. On the difference between despicere and dispicere he has much to write, and in the course of his letter he makes free use of quotations from the Greek. From Epistle 254 we find that Charlemagne had inquired, through Candidus, as to the distinction between aeternum and sempiternum; perpetuum and inmortale; saeculum, aevum, and tempus. In Epistle 240, a very long letter, he writes to the emperor in reply to his inquiry as to the force of a question put by the Greek master—an Athenian sophist—about the price of human salvation.
Considering the large part which the annalist Eginhart played in the administrative work of Charlemagne’s reign, as secretary to the king and emperor, it is remarkable that we find only one reference to him in Alcuin’s letters. This one reference is affectionate in tone, and gives no reason at all for supposing that Alcuin was jealous of the quick and skilful secretary. The reference occurs in Ep. 112, A.D. 799, a letter addressed to Karl by Alcuin. The letter itself is of so interesting a character that the opportunity of giving it in its entirety should not be lost. From its contents we gather that Alcuin had sent to Karl a treatise which he had hastily dictated and had not read over and corrected. Karl had noted errors in the writing and punctuation, and had sent it back to be corrected, a charming piece of discipline which raises Karl higher than ever in our appreciative regard.
Ep. 112. A.D. 799.
“To the most pious and excellent lord king David, Flaccus wounded[259] with the pen of love sends greeting.