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 despise the Slavs and their language.’ Cosmas also tells us that Libussa, the semi-mythical female ruler of Bohemia, stated that it was more likely that a fish should become warm under the ice, than that a Bohemian should agree with a German.

Cosmas’s Chronicon Bohemorum—written in Latin, as was the book of Kristián though obviously the work of a man of advanced age, is certainly superior to many similar chronicles which belong to this period. His Latinity, of course judged from the low standpoint of the twelfth century, is fairly good, and it is obvious that Cosmas was a good classical scholar. He frequently quotes Sallustius, Ovid, Virgil, Terence, Lucan, and particularly Horace, who seems to have been a particular favourite. Cosmas was not indeed devoid of the ambition of himself writing Latin verses; thus he ends the second book of his chronicle with these rather rugged lines:

Modern critics have indeed accused Cosmas of attaching more importance to his Latin quotations and to his classical reminiscences than to historical research. This reproach is, I think, unfounded, and the great Bohemian historian Palacky pointed out many years ago that a large mass of original matter gathered from the libraries of various Bohemian monasteries is embodied in the chronicle of Cosmas.

The chronicle is divided into three books, which were certainly written at different times and only afterwards joined together to form one complete work.