Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/212

 Ain nlphi 190 THE DECLINE AND FALL and the writings, of the pupil of Avicenna. The school of medicine has long slept in the name of an university ;'^3 but her precepts are abridged in a string of aphorisms, bound together in the Leonine verses, or Latin rhymes, of the twelfth century. '^^ Trade of IL Scvcn milcs to the west of Salerno, and thirty to the south of Naples, the obscure town of Amalphi displayed the power and rewards of industry. The land, however fertile, was of narrow extent ; but the sea was accessible and open ; the inhabitants fii-st assumed the office of supplying the western world with the manufactures and productions of the East ; and this useful traffic was the source of their opulence and freedom. The government was popular under the administration of a duke and the supre- macy of the Greek emperor. Fifty thousand citizens were numbered in the walls of Amalphi ; nor was any city more abundantly provided with gold, silver, and the objects of precious luxury. The mariners who swarmed in her port excelled in the theory and practice of navigation and astronomy ; and the dis- covery of the compass, which has opened the globe, is due to their injjenuitv or good fortune. Their trade was extended to the coasts, or at least to the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India ; and their settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jeru- salem, and Alexandria acquired the privileges of independent colonies.'"'^ After three hundred years of prosperity, Amalphi ^ [It was a school of doctors, in no way resembling a university. As Mr. Rash- dall observes (/('c. «V., p. 82) : " Salerno remains a completely isolated factor in the academic polity of the Middle Ages. While its position as a school of medicine was, for tut) centtiries at least, as unique as that of Paris in Theology and that of Bologna in Law, while throughout the Middle .-^ges no school of medicine except Montpellier rivalled its fame, it remained without influence in the development of academic institutions."] i^ Muratori carries their antiquity above the year {1066) of the death of Edward the Confessor, the rex Anglonim to whom they are addressed. Nor is this date affected by the opinion, or rather mistake, of Pasquier (Recherches de la France, 1. vii. c. 2) and Ducange (Glossar. Latin.). The practice of rhyming, as early as the seventh century, was borrowed from the languages of the North and East (Muratori, Antiquitat. tom. iii. dissert, xl. p. 686-708). [Constantine translated the Aphorisms of Hippocrates from the Arabic version, c. a.d. 1080.] ^ The description of .Amalphi, by William the Apulian (1. iii. p. 267), contains much truth and some poetry ; and the third line may be applied to the sailor's compass : Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus. auro Partibus innumeris ; hac plurimus urbe moratur Nauta maris caeliquevias aferire peritus. Hue et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe Regis, et .' tiochi. Gens hasc freta plurima transit. His [hie] -Arabes, Indi, Siculi nascuntur et Afri. Haec gens est totum prope nobilitata per orbem, Et mercanda ferens, et amans mercata referre.