[2453] V. Rose (1875) 337-8 suggests that this is a fragment from a fuller work of Aesculapius to Augustus cited by Thomas of Cantimpré, Albertus Magnus, and Vincent of Beauvais. See also Peter of Abano, De venenis, cap. 5, “in epistola Esculapii philosophi ad Octavianum.” But perhaps these writers refer to the entire work of Sextus Papirius.
[2454] Ed. Ruellius, with Scribonius Largus, Paris, 1529.
[2455] In a later medieval vocabulary taxus is given as a synonym for the animal called camaleon: Alphita, ed. Daremberg from BN 6954 and 6957 in De Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, III, 272-322.
[2456] Cotton Vespasian B, X, #6.
[2457] Harleian 3859, called tenth century in the Harleian catalogue which is often incorrect in its dating, but 11th or 12th century by d’Avezac, Mommsen in his edition of Solinus, and Beazley, Dawn of Geography, I, 523. Royal 15-B-II and 15-C-IV, both of the 12th century. For other MSS at Paris, Leyden, and Rome see Beazley, op. cit.
[2458] But after all is Suetonius any more respectable a historian than Aethicus and Solinus are geographers?
[2459] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, II, Appendix: “How M. Wuttke can attach any value to such a production is to me quite incomprehensible; still more that he should ascribe the translation to the great ecclesiastical writer,” Jerome. Bunbury believed that the work was not earlier than the seventh century. Beazley, Dawn of Geography, I, 355-63, is of the same opinion.
[2460] In his edition of Solinus, p. xxvii, he contends that certain passages which Wuttke pointed out as common to Aethicus and Solinus are borrowed by Aethicus from Isidore who died in 636.
[2461] Harleian 3859.
[2462] Steele, Opera hactenus inedita, 1905, Fasc. I, pp. 1-2.