28 INTRODUCTION. 
by Peter Diaconus to have been a learned and elo- — 
quent physician, a disciple of Constantine, and to 
have flourished in 1075, who may be the person, 
He quitted his monastery, and died at Naples, 
where he deposited the works of Constantine. The 
time and the other circumstances do not disagree, 
but Peter Diaconus does not mention his surname, 
and though he speaks of a medical book of Apho- 
risms written by him, he says nothing there, or any- 
where else, of the Schola Salerni. The evidence in 
his favour is therefore very slight. 
IV. SUBJECT OF THE SCHOLA SALERNITANA. 
From the state of medicine at the time the poem 
was written, it is evident from what sources its pre- 
cepts must have been derived. The industry of 
commentators has traced every doctrine to its Greek, 
Latin, or Arabian origin. In the work itself, Hippo 
crates, Galen, and Pliny, are expressly quoted: but 
the author was principally indebted to the poem De 
Virtutibus Herbarum, which was composed by 
» or Odobanus, a physician in the dark ages, in 
5! De viris illust, Casinens, cap. 35. 
