It's not _Neckam_, or any else, that can make mee entertaine the
least thought of the signification of _Dulcarnon_ to be
_Pythagorus_ his sacrifice after his geometricall theorem in
finding the square of an orthogonall triangle's sides, or that
it is a word of _Latine_ deduction: but, indeed, by easier
pronunciation it was made of D'hulkarnyan[5], i.e. _two-horned_
which the _Mahometan Arabians_ {109} vie for a root in
calculation, meaning _Alexander_, as that great dictator of
knowledge, _Joseph Scaliger_ (with some ancients) wills, but, by
warranted opinion of my learned friend Mr. _Lydyat_, in his
_Emendatio Temporum_, it began in _Seleucus Nicanor_, XII yeares
after _Alexander's_ death. The name was applyed, either because
after time that _Alexander_ had persuaded himself to be _Jupiter
Hammon's_ sonne, whose statue was with _Ram's_ hornes, both his
owne and his successors' coins were stampt with horned images:
or else in respect of his II pillars erected in the East as a
_Nihil ultra_[6] of his conquest, and some say because hee had
in power the Easterne and Westerne World, signified in the two
hornes. But howsoever, it well fits the passage, either, as if
hee had personated _Creseide_ at the entrance of two wayes, not
knowing which to take; in like sense as that of _Prodicus_ his
_Hercules_, _Pythagoras_ his _Y._, or the Logicians _Dilemma_
expresse; or else, which is the truth of his conceit, that hee
was at a _nonplus_, as the interpretation in his next staffe
makes plaine. How many of noble _Chaucer's_ readers never so
much as suspect this his short essay of knowledge, transcending
the common Rode? And by his treatise of the _Astrolabe_ (which,
I dare sweare, was chiefly learned out of _Messahalah_) it is
plaine hee was much acquainted with the mathematiques, and