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1. Cicero, Academica, II, ii, 127.

2. Horace, Epistles, II, ii, 208–9.

3. Lucretius, II, 1037–8; 1032–5.

4. Lucretius, VI, 674–7; Cicero, De natura deorum, II, XXXVIII, 96.

5. ’80: power of God with more reverence…

6. In Christian theology it is only an event which occurs against the whole order of Nature which constitutes a miracle.

7. In 1385 the Comte de Foix took to his rooms and then was able to announce that there had just occurred in Portugal a huge slaughter of soldiers from Béarn. It was believed that he had a familiar spirit, either one called Orthon or another like him, who, in an earlier period, had deserted the local curé to serve the Seigneur de Corasse (Froissart, III, 17).

8. Nicole Gilles, Annales des moderateurs des belliqueuses Gaulles; the event ‘happened’ in 1233.

9. Plutarch, Life of Paulus Aemilius. The reference to Caesar is puzzling.

10. Such works as the De Plini erroribus of Nicolaus Leonicenus had helped spread criticisms of Pliny.

11. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’ Acquitaine, Poitiers, 1567 etc., pp. 21–30.

12. St Augustine, City of God, XII, viii.

13. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxi, 49, adapted: Cicero wrote, ‘For even though Plato gave no reasons – note what tribute I pay to him – he would convince me by his very authority.’