ABSTRACT
Of the knowledge bequeathed by the pagan Classical world, much had been lost: Ptolemy’s Geography, for instance, was unavailable (it was not to be translated into Latin until c.1400), and the West had to make do with inferior authors such as Pliny, whose Natural History was greatly in vogue throughout the Middle Ages (Chibnall 1975). The material found in their works was refracted, moreover, through the digest compiled by Martianus Capella (fourth century) or the encyclopedic work of Solinus (third century); and it was concerned with fantasy rather than being the fruit of direct observation. Thus the ‘East’ was a region of marvels and peopled by fabulous beasts and by monstrous humans – the Cynocephali (a dog-headed race) and Panotii (a race endowed with enormous ears) immortalized in the twelfth-century tympanum at Vézelay; the Parossitae, whose mouths were so small that they derived nourishment by inhaling the steam from cooking meat; the Astomi (a people with no mouth at all); the Amazons, and so on (Friedman 1981; Wittkower 1942).
