|
The Beaver (fable)
In ancient times, the beaver was hunted for its testicles, which it was thought had medicinal qualities. The story that the animal would gnaw these off to save itself when hunted was preserved by some ancient Greek naturalists and perpetuated into the Middle Ages. It also appeared as a Greek fable ascribed to Aesop and is numbered 118 in the Perry Index. In Latin literary sources, the fable was versified by Phaedrus and is alluded to by Juvenal in a satire. There the merchant Catullus jettisons his rich cargo from a ship caught in a storm ‘in imitation of the beaver that in its desire to escape death, will bite off its testicles and render itself a eunuch’. The moral that Juvenal and later fabulists drew from the story is that in order to preserve oneself it is better to sacrifice lesser considerations. Interpretations The beaver's example was eventually to be recommended to good Christians. In Classical times the priests of Cybele castrated themselves in order to devote th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salisbury Bestiary
Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wiltshire, near the edge of Salisbury Plain. Salisbury Cathedral was formerly north of the city at Old Sarum. The cathedral was relocated and a settlement grew up around it, which received a city charter in 1227 as . This continued to be its official name until 2009, when Salisbury City Council was established. Salisbury railway station is an interchange between the West of England Main Line and the Wessex Main Line. Stonehenge is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is northwest of Salisbury. Name The name ''Salisbury'', which is first recorded around the year 900 as ''Searoburg'' (dative ''Searobyrig''), is a partial translation of the Roman Celtic name ''Sorbiodūnum''. The Brittonic suffix ''-dūnon'', meaning "fortress" (in reference t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emblem Books
An emblem book is a book collecting emblems (allegorical illustrations) with accompanying explanatory text, typically morals or poems. This category of books was popular in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Emblem books are collections of sets of three elements: an icon or image, a motto, and text explaining the connection between the image and motto. The text ranged in length from a few lines of verse to pages of prose. Emblem books descended from medieval bestiaries that explained the importance of animals, proverbs, and fables. In fact, writers often drew inspiration from Greek and Roman sources such as Aesop's Fables and Plutarch's Lives. Definition Scholars differ on the key question of whether the actual emblems in question are the visual images, the accompanying texts, or the combination of the two. This is understandable, given that first emblem book, the ''Emblemata'' of Andrea Alciato, was first issued in an unauthorized edition in which the woodcuts wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pietro Andrea Mattioli
Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (; 12 March 1501 – ) was a doctor and naturalist born in Siena. Biography He received his MD at the University of Padua in 1523, and subsequently practiced the profession in Siena, Rome, Trento and Gorizia, becoming personal physician of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Further Austria in Prague and Ambras Castle, and of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna. Mattioli described the first case of cat allergy. His patient was so sensitive to cats that if he was sent into a room with a cat he reacted with agitation, sweating and pallor. A careful student of botany, he described 100 new plants and coordinated the medical botany of his time in his ''Discorsi'' ("Commentaries") on the ''De Materia Medica'' of Dioscorides. The first edition of Mattioli's work, the Italian translation of ''De Materia Medica'', supplemented with his own commentaries, appeared in 1544 in Venice. There were several later editions in Italian. In 1554 the first edition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ulisse Aldrovandi
Ulisse Aldrovandi (11 September 1522 – 4 May 1605) was an Italian naturalist, the moving force behind Bologna's botanical garden, one of the first in Europe. Carl Linnaeus and the comte de Buffon reckoned him the father of natural history studies. He is usually referred to, especially in older scientific literature in Latin, as Aldrovandus; his name in Italian is equally given as Aldroandi. Life Aldrovandi was born in Bologna to Teseo Aldrovandi and his wife, a noble but poor family. His father was a lawyer, and Secretary to the Senate of Bologna, but died when Ulisse was seven years old. His widowed mother wanted him to become a jurist. Initially he was sent to apprentice with merchants as a scribe for a short time when he was 14 years old, but after studying mathematics, Latin, law, and philosophy, initially at the University of Bologna, and then at the University of Padua in 1545, he became a notary. His interests successively extended to philosophy and logic, which he c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of ''De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances (a pharmacopeia), that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. For almost two millennia Dioscorides was regarded as the most prominent writer on plants and plant drugs. Life A native of Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor, Dioscorides likely studied medicine nearby at the school in Tarsus, which had a pharmacological emphasis, and he dedicated his medical books to Laecanius Arius, a medical practitioner there. Though he writes he lived a "soldier's life" or "soldier-like life", his pharmacopeia refers almost solely to plants found in the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean, making it likely that he served in campaigns, or travelled in a civilian capacity, less w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaius Julius Solinus
Gaius Julius Solinus was a Latin grammarian, geographer, and compiler who probably flourished in the early 3rd century AD. Historical scholar Theodor Mommsen dates him to the middle of the 3rd century. Solinus was the author of ''De mirabilibus mundi'' ("The wonders of the world") which circulated both under the title ''Collectanea rerum memorabilium'' ("Collection of Curiosities"), and ''Polyhistor'', though the latter title was favoured by the author himself. The work is indeed a description of curiosities in a chorographic framework. Adventus, to whom it is dedicated, is identified with Oclatinius Adventus, Roman consul in AD 218. It contains a short description of the ancient world, with remarks on historical, social, religious, and natural history questions. The greater part is taken from Pliny's ''Natural History'' and the geography of Pomponius Mela. According to Mommsen, Solinus also relied upon a chronicle (possibly by Cornelius Bocchus) and a ''Chorographia pliniana'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Natural History''), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume work ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus—who many scholars agree had never travelled in Germania—used ''Bella Germani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
''Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths'', also known simply as ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' or ''Vulgar Errors'', is a work by Thomas Browne challenging and refuting the "vulgar" or common errors and superstitions of his age. It first appeared in 1646 and went through five subsequent editions, the last revision occurring in 1672. The work includes evidence of Browne's adherence to the Baconian method of empirical observation of nature, and was in the vanguard of work-in-progress scientific journalism during the 17th-century scientific revolution. Throughout its pages frequent examples of Browne's subtle humour can also be found. Browne's three determinants for obtaining truth were the authority of past scholarly works, the act of reason, and empirical experience. Each of these determinants is employed upon subjects ranging from common folklore to the cosmological. Subjects covered in ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' are arranged i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne (; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry and are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffused with melancholia, Browne's writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence. Biography Early life Thomas Browne was born in the parish of St Michael, Cheapside, in London on 19 October 1605, the youngest child—having an elder brother and two elder sisters—of Thomas Browne, a silk merchant from Upton, Cheshire, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Croxall
Samuel Croxall (c. 1690 – 1752) was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables. Early career Samuel Croxall was born in Walton on Thames, where his father (also called Samuel) was vicar. He was educated at Eton and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1711 and entered holy orders. Soon after graduating he began to emerge as a political pamphleteer, taking the Whig side on the question of the Hanoverian succession. In 1713 he published ''An original canto of Spencer: design'd as part of his Faerie Queene, but never printed'', followed next year by ''Another original canto of Spencer''. Croxall's satirical target was the Tory politician of the day, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and the choice of poetical model was also politically motivated. In 1706 the Whig turncoat Matthew Prior had used the Spenserian stanza in ''An Ode, Humbly to the Queen'' on the conduct of the War of the Spanish Succession; a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger L'Estrange
Sir Roger L'Estrange (17 December 1616 – 11 December 1704) was an English pamphleteer, author, courtier, and press censor. Throughout his life L'Estrange was frequently mired in controversy and acted as a staunch ideological defender of King Charles II's regime during the Restoration era. His works played a key role in the emergence of a distinct 'Tory' bloc during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81. Perhaps his best known polemical pamphlet was ''An Account of the Growth of Knavery'', which ruthlessly attacked the parliamentary opposition to Charles II and his successor James, Duke of York (later King James II), placing them as fanatics who misused contemporary popular anti-Catholic sentiment to attack the Restoration court and the existing social order in order to pursue their own political ends. Following the Exclusion Crisis and the failure of the nascent Whig faction to disinherit James, Duke of York in favour of Charles II's illegitimate son James, 1st Duke of Monmouth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrea Alciato
Andrea Alciato (8 May 149212 January 1550), commonly known as Alciati (Andreas Alciatus), was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists. Biography Alciati was born in Alzate Brianza, near Milan, and settled in France in the early 16th century. He displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus and accumulated a sylloge of Roman inscriptions from Milan and its territories, as part of his preparation for his history of Milan, written in 1504–05. Among his several appointments, Alciati taught Law at the University of Bourges between 1529 and 1535. It was Guillaume Budé who encouraged the call to Bourges at the time. Pierre Bayle, in his General Dictiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
