A well-known work in the middle ages dating from the period of the Roman Empire was the Collectanea rerum memorabilium or Polyhistor of Solinus. Mommsen’s edition lists 153 manuscripts from 32 places,[1473] and we shall find many citations of Solinus in our later medieval authors. Martianus Capella and Isidore were the first to make extensive use of his work. In the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus had little respect for Solinus as an authority and expressed more than once the quite accurate opinion that his work was full of lies. Nevertheless copies of it continued to abound in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and by 1554 five printed editions had appeared. “From it directly come most of the fables in works of object so different as those of Dicuil, Isidore, Capella, and Priscian.”[1474]
His date.
The first extant author to make use of Solinus is Augustine in The City of God, while he is first named in the Genealogus of 455 A. D. None of the manuscripts of the work antedate the ninth century, but many of them have copied an earlier subscription from a manuscript written “by the zeal and diligence of our lord Theodosius, the unconquered prince.” This is taken to refer to the emperor Theodosius II, 401-450. The work itself, however, has no Christian characteristics; on the contrary it is very fond of mentioning places famed in pagan religion and Greek mythology and of recounting miracles and marvels connected with heathen shrines and rites. Indeed, Solinus seldom, if ever, mentions anything later than the first century of our era. He speaks of Byzantium, not of Constantinople, and makes no mention of the Roman provinces as divided in the system of Diocletian. His book, however, is a compilation from earlier writings so that we need not expect allusions to his own age. The Latin style and general literary make-up of the work are characteristic of the declining empire and early medieval period. Mommsen was inclined to date Solinus in the third rather than the fourth century, but the work seems to have been revised about the sixth century, after which date it became customary to call it the Polyhistor rather than the Collectanea rerum memorabilium. It is also referred to, however, as De mirabilibus mundi, or Wonders of the World.
General character of his work: its relation to Pliny.
The work is primarily a geography and is arranged by countries and places, beginning with Rome and Italy. As each locality is considered, Solinus sometimes tells a little of its history, but is especially inclined to recount miraculous religious events or natural marvels associated with that particular region. Thus in describing two lakes he rather apologizes for mentioning the first at all because it can scarcely be called miraculous, but assures us that the second “is regarded as very extraordinary.”[1475] Sometimes he digresses to other topics such as calendar reform.[1476] Solinus draws both his geographical data and further details very largely from Pliny’s Natural History; but inasmuch as Pliny treated of these matters in separate books, Solinus has to re-organize the material. He also selects simply a few particulars from Pliny’s wealth of detail on any given subject, and furthermore considerably alters Pliny’s wording, sometimes condensing the thought, sometimes amplifying the phraseology—apparently in an effort to make the point clearer and easier reading. Of Pliny’s thirty-seven books only those from the third to the thirteenth inclusive and the last book are used to any extent by Solinus. That is to say, he either was acquainted with only, or confined himself to, those books dealing with geography, man and other animals, and gems, omitting almost entirely, except for the twelfth and thirteenth books, Pliny’s elaborate treatment of vegetation and of medicinal simples[1477] and discussion of metals and the fine arts. Solinus does not acknowledge his great debt to Pliny in particular, although he keeps alluding to the fulness with which everything has already been discussed by past authors, and although he cites other writers who are almost unknown to us. Of his known sources Pomponius Mela is the chief after Pliny but is used much less. On the other hand, the number of passages for which Mommsen was unable to give any source is not inconsiderable. As may have been already inferred, the work of Solinus is brief; the text alone would scarcely fill one hundred pages.[1478]
Animals and gems.
It would perhaps be rash to conjecture which quality commended the book most to the following period: its handy size, or its easy style and fairly systematic arrangement, or its emphasis upon marvels. The last characteristic is at least the most germane to our investigation. Solinus rendered the service, if we may so term it, of reducing Pliny’s treatment of animals and precious stones in particular to a few common examples, which either were already the best known or became so as a result of his selection. Indeed, King was of the opinion that the descriptions of gems in Solinus were more precise, technical, and systematic than those in Pliny, and found his notices “often extremely useful.”[1479] Solinus describes such animals as the wolf, lynx, bear, lion, hyena, onager or wild ass, basilisk, crocodile, hippopotamus, phoenix, dolphin, and chameleon; and recounts the marvelous properties of such gems as achates or agate, galactites, catochites, crystal, gagates, adamant, heliotrope, hyacinth, and paeanites. The dragons of India and Ethiopia also occupy his attention, as they did that of Philostratus in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana; indeed, he repeats in different words the statement found in Philostratus that they swim far out to sea.[1480] In Sardinia, on the contrary, there are no snakes, but a poisonous ant exists there. Fortunately there are also healing waters there with which to counteract its venom, but there is also native to Sardinia an herb called Sardonia which causes those who eat it to die of laughter.[1481]
Occult medicine.
Although Solinus makes no use of Pliny’s medical books, he shows considerable interest in the healing properties of simples and in medicine. He tells us that those who slept in the shrine of Aesculapius at Epidaurus were warned in dreams how to heal their diseases,[1482] and that the third daughter of Aeetes, named Angitia, devoted herself “to resisting disease by the salubrious science” of medicine.[1483] According to Solinus Circe as well as Medea was a daughter of Aeetes, but usually in Greek mythology she is represented as his sister.
Democritus and Zoroaster not regarded as magicians.