458 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



(Chapter 35) carries the Habitable Climates (of -vrhich more below) 

 farther northwards than would have been done in Messahalah's time. 

 Another, Chapter 14, strongly reprobates certain ideas in natural (not 

 judicial) astrology, which were maintained by ]y!essahalah himself.' 



Although two others of these Chapters, 14 and 35, are inconsistent 

 with each other on one point, it seems likely that all these twelve 

 chapters have been derived from the same source ; we shall, for con- 

 venience, suppose this to be so, without building anything upon it, and 

 we shall consider them as written by Duodecimalis, without asking 

 oui'selves whether he is a person or only a personification. 



There are several indications that Duodecimalis was an Ai'abic 

 writer. He seems to have belonged to the schools of Morocco or Spain 

 decadent in his time. In Chapter 17 Egypt and Africa are spoken of 

 as differing in time by several hours. Therefore, " Africa " evidently 

 means here, as it did originally, the district about Carthage. Already, 

 in the third century of the Christian era, the name "Africa" was 

 extended by the Romans to all the coast west of the Great Syrtis ; and 

 we may well believe that in the much later times of Duodecimalis the 

 wide application of the name was well established outside of the said 

 district about Carthage (or about Tunis). But it must have been still 

 preseiwed as a special distinctive name within and near that district in 

 the time of Duodecimalis, because even at the present day the people 

 of those pai'ts call that district by the name of Afiikiyah. Therefore 

 the comparatively late Duodecimalis lived, in all probability, near that 

 district. 



That the Irish version of the Tractate is, as we have said, derived 

 from a Latin one, is evident fi'om this, that at the head of each chapter 

 in the Irish are given the leading words of the corresponding chapter 

 in the Latin exemplar for the more ready identification of the chap- 

 ters, and also that Latin words are used here and there in the text, 

 when convenient, as in the names of the principal circles of the firma- 

 ment, &c. An English translation has been made very carefully from 

 the Irish by Hi'. John J. O'Farrelly in the Academy House, to which 

 illusti'ative notes have been appended by the present writer. These 

 notes, by the way, give the late history of the ms. 



Messahalah's work which, as we have said, occupies two-thii-ds of 

 the present tractate, was translated fi'om the Arabic into Latin by 

 Gerard of Sabbionetta, near Cremona, in the thii'teenth century. His 

 translation was edited by J. Stabius, and printed at Nuremberg in 1504, 



' See his ' ' De ratione Circuli et Stellarum, et qualiter operantur in hoc Sseculo." 



