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Bridging
the Old World and the New
ment they made of his De Interpretation with Porphy-
ry's Eisagoge made philosophy almost wholly occupied
with logical problems in the earliest scholastic period. Of
Plato's dialogs the Irish scholars appear to have known
the Timaeus in the original, tho on the Continent it was
known only in the translation of Chalcidius, made in the
fifth century. The commentaries of Chalcidius, the works
of Augustine, the De Dogmate Platonis of Apuleius, and
the commentary
of Macrobius on Cicero's Dream of
Scipio, gave them an acquaintance with the general phi-
losophy of Plato. Translations and compilations of
Marius Victorinus, Claudianus Mamertus and Donatus
were read and expounded in the Irish schools, and later
the works of the Neo-Platonists filtered through them.
One of their current text-books in philosophy was the De
Consolatione of Boethius and in the tenth century they
became familiar also with his translation of the Cate-
goriae of Aristotle. They used some of the rhetorical
and dialectical treatises of Cicero, such as his Topica and
De Offiiciis indeed we have Irish scholars to thank for
the preservation of parts of his Pro Fonteio and In
Pisonem. They knew also the De Beneficiis of Seneca and
the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. Priscian and
Donatus were their chief authorities on grammar, and
other greatly used text-books in the Irish schools were the
commentaries and original works of Martianus Capella,
Charisius, Cassiodorus, Boethius and Isidore.
Jerome was their great authority on Scripture. The
Moralia of Gregory the Great was the chief text-book in
the field of moral theology, particularly at Armagh. Irish
divinity
students were also familiar with the works of
Hilary, Ambrose, Athanasius, Orosius, Pope Leo, Chrysostom,
Lactantius, Sedulins, Juvencus, Qement of Alex-
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