ABSTRACT
SAXO, that most famous writer on Danish affairs, who has been referred to above and will often have to be referred to later, recounts that, among other very vigorous men of the North, giants in size and endowed with might, there was a certain Starkather from Tavastland, whose amazing, heroical qualities he praises so becomingly that it seems he can have had in his time few peers in Europe or in the whole world, and perhaps has had no more to this day, nor will have in future. 1 While he attributes a great many virtues to that same lofty, spirited individual, among the rest is that abstemiousness which is so utterly essential in a powerful man, and which ought to be added to this account 235of mine, as a mirror for our wanton age and one which should be gazed into with deep attention.
Starkather the Tavastian
Abstemiousness
