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CHAP. V
LATIN TRANSMITTERS
109
at the handling of topics in the Etymologies one feels it to have been a huge collection of terms and definitions. The actual information conveyed is very slight. Isidore is under the spell of words. Were they fetishes to him? did they carry moral potency? At all events the working of his mind reflects the age-long dominance of grammar and rhetoric in Roman education, which treated other topics almost as illustrations of these chief branches.[1]
- ↑ The exaggerated growth of grammatical and rhetorical studies is curiously shown by the mass of words invented to indicate the various kinds of tropes and figures. See the list in Bede, De schematis (Migne 90, col. 175 sqq.).
