Germany and Italy 257 has composed v TT) ^/u.aAoo-ta avrov (en ti echmalosia autii), that is to say, "during his wanderings," and has dedi- cated to Recemund, bishop of Elvira, in Spain. 1 To the Honorable Lord and Mirror of Holiness, Lord Rece- mund, Bishop of Elvira, Liutprand, not owing to any merit of his own, deacon of the church at Pavia, Greeting : Owing to a want of confidence in my powers, I have now for two years hesitated to fulfill your request, my dearest father, that I should narrate the deeds of the emperors and kings of all Europe, since I knew them not through doubt- ful, hearsay but from my own observation. I was deterred from the undertaking by my complete want of eloquence and by the ill will of the critics. For these arrogant fellows, who are too lazy to read themselves and, as the learned Boethius says, think that they wear the philosophic mantle when they have on scarcely a rag of it, will say mockingly to me, " Our predecessors have written so much that there is now a dearth of readers rather than of bpoks." And they will quote that verse of the comedy, " We shall hear nothing that others have not said before." 2 I answer all such barking curs by the observation that just as it is with those who the more they drink the thirstier they are, so with the learned, the more they read the more they long for new books. One who, for example, has become weary of the profound works of the eloquent Cicero may find recreation in such light writings as the present one. Just as one who gazes at the sun directly, with nothing between his eye and it, will only be dazzled and not see it in its proper shape, so the mind, it seems to me, which contemplates with- out intermission the teachings of the Academy, and of the Peripatetics and Stoics, will flag unless it finds refreshment in the salutary laughter called forth by comedy, or in the entertaining tales of the heroes. 1 Liutprand probably began his book in 958, at the urgent request of the bishop of Elvira, who was sojourning at the court of Otto as the representative of the Spanish caliph, Abderrahman. 2 A quotation from memory from Terence.
