[512] Livy, V, 21, 9.
[513] Terentius Varro, de lingua latina, lib. v, 148-150.
[514] Valerius Maximus, factorum et dictorum memorabilium, lib. i, viii, 7.
[515] Ibid., i, viii, 3.
[516] Ibid., i, viii, 4, with the substitution of “seen” for “given.”
[517] In a disputation between Sylvester and Jewish rabbis the rabbis are said to have killed a bull by shouting the sacred name, Jehovah, and Sylvester is said to have brought him to life by whispering the name of Christ. Cf. Coleman, Constantine the Great, etc., p. 163.
[518] These stories were to be found, among other places, in the Mirabilia urbis Romae, a guidebook to Rome dating from the twelfth century. English translation by F. M. Nichols, The Marvels of Rome (London and Rome, 1889), pp. 19-20.
[519] This clause, though not in the MS. or Hutten, seems necessary to the sense of the following clause, so I have translated it from Bonneau’s text. In the Vita Silvestri we are told that the pagan priests ordered Constantine to bathe in infants’ blood in order to cure himself of leprosy. Cf. Coleman, Constantine the Great, etc., p. 162.
[520] It will be remembered that Valla wrote this while in the service of the King of Naples, who was in conflict with imperial as well as with papal claims.
[521] A forgery of the eleventh century. Cf. E. Emerton, Medieval Europe, p. 55.