st which the wonderful
variety of astronomy required, according to Josephus, a period of six
hundred years, to submit it to ocular observation. Nor, indeed, do
they deny that the fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded a
more nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus they
had not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more lengthened
period of vigour; to which it contributed not a little that they lived
according to virtue and denied themselves all luxurious delights.
Whoever therefore is by the good gift of God endowed with gift of
science, let him, according to the counsel of the Holy Spirit, write
wisdom in his time of leisure (Eccles. xxxviii.), that his reward may
be with the blessed and his days may be lengthened in this present
world.

And further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of the world, we
find that famous emperors not only attained excellent skill in the art
of writing, but indulged greatly in its practice. Julius Caesar, the
first and greatest of them all, has left us Commentaries on the Gallic
and the Civil Wars written by himself; he wrote also two books De
Analogia, and two books of Anticatones, and a poem called Iter; and
many other works. Julius and Augustus devised means of writing one
letter for another, and so concealing what they wrote. For Julius put
the fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst
Augustus used the second for the first, the third for the second, and
so throughout. He is said in the greatest difficulties of affairs
during the Mutinensian War to have read and written and even declaimed
every day. Tiberius wrote a lyric poem and some Greek verses.
Claudius likewise was skilled in both Greek and Latin, and wrote
several books. But Titus was skilled above all men in the art of
writing, and easily imitated any hand he chose; so that he used to say
that if he had wished it he might have become a most skilful forger.
All these things are noted by Suetonius in his Lives of the XII.
Caesars.

CHAPTER XVII

OF SHOWING DUE PROPRIETY IN THE CUSTODY OF BOOKS

We are not only rendering service to God in preparing volumes of new
books, but also exercising an office of sacred piety when we treat
books carefully, and again when we restore them to their proper places
and commend them to inviolable custody; that they may rejoice in purity
while we have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are put
back in