Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/525

Rh "People are persuaded that it availeth much against the sting of venomous spiders and scorpions: which propertie I could very well believe to be in the Sicilian agaths, for that so soone as scorpions come within the aire, and breath of the said province of Sicilie, as venomous as they bee otherwise, they die thereupon." "In Persia, they are persuaded, that a perfume of agathes turneth away tempests and all extraordinarie impressions of the aire, as also staieth the violent streame and rage of rivers. But to know which be proper for this purpose, they use to cast them into a cauldron of seething water: for if they coole the same, it is an argument that they bee right."—''Pliny Nat. Hist.'' xxxvii. 10.

"We must not forget that there was the romance of . And I believe Antony and Cleopatra were more known characters in the dark ages, than is commonly supposed. Shakspeare is thought to have formed his play on this story from North's translation of Amyot's unauthentic French Plutarch, published in London in 1579."

From such sources, in all probability, the monks