How many students of Euclid have been repelled by the Pons
Asinorum, as by a lofty and precipitous rock, which no help of
ladders could enable them to scale! THIS IS A HARD SAYING, they
exclaim, AND WHO CAN RECEIVE IT. The child of inconstancy, who
ended by wishing to be transformed into an ass, would perhaps
never have given up the study of philosophy, if he had met him in
friendly guise veiled under the cloak of pleasure; but anon,
astonished by Crato's chair and struck dumb by his endless
questions, as by a sudden thunderbolt, he saw no refuge but in
flight.

So much we have alleged in defence of the poets; and now we
proceed to show that those who study them with proper intent are
not to be condemned in regard to them. For our ignorance of one
single word prevents the understanding of a whole long sentence,
as was assumed in the previous chapter. As now the sayings of
the saints frequently allude to the inventions of the poets, it
must needs happen that through our not knowing the poem referred
to, the whole meaning of the author is completely obscured, and
assuredly, as Cassiodorus says in his book Of the Institutes of
Sacred Literature: Those things are not to be considered trifles
without which great things cannot come to pass. It follows
therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do not understand
Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Lactantius, Sidonius, and very many
others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter.

The Venerable Bede has very clearly discussed and determined this
doubtful point, as is related by that great compiler Gratian, the
repeater of numerous authors, who is as confused in form as he