The conversion of Arno into Aquila was very natural to a Yorkshireman. In several cases we can only guess at the Teutonic names which Alcuin translated into Latin; for example, Gallicellulus (Ep. 260). In two cases, at least, he translates into Greek. Cambridge men who remember with much affection their private tutor in Mathematics, William Walton, will remember his skill in thus rendering names; his Prosgennades still survives, known to the world as Atkinson. With Alcuin, Hechstan becomes Altapetra. The abbess Adaula evidently had a Teutonic name. Anthropos was his friend Monna. Stratocles had some such name as Heribercht. Epistle 282 is addressed, very near the end of his life, “to my best-loved friends in Christ, brother and son, Anthropos and Stratocles, the humble levite Alchuine sends greeting.” Epistle 283, of the same late date, is addressed “to my dearest son Altapetra, the levite Albinus sends greeting”. In the course of this letter to Hechstan, Alcuin sends greetings and requests for prayers to two friends whose names would not fall very easily into Latin, Scaest and Baegnod, the latter a common Anglo-Saxon name, usually in the form Beagnoth, with the final _d_ aspirated. It occurs in runes on a knife in the British Museum, and is found in Kent and Wessex. CHAPTER XVII Grammatical questions submitted to Alcuin by Karl.—Alcuin and Eginhart.—Eginhart’s description of Charlemagne.—Alcuin’s interest in missions.—The premature exaction of tithes.—Charlemagne’s elephant Abulabaz.—Figures of elephants in silk stuffs.—Earliest examples of French and German.—Boniface’s _Abrenuntiatio Diaboli_.—Early Saxon.—The earliest examples of Anglo-Saxon prose and verse. In many of Alcuin’s letters we find answers or allusions to questions addressed to him by Karl. In Epistle 253 Alcuin writes twelve paragraphs to the emperor in answer to twelve questions. In Epistle 252 he writes to Homer (Angilbert), who has been commanded by the emperor to consult him on the gender of the word _rubus_ and on the difference in meaning of _despicere_ and _dispicere_. In regard to _rubus_, he sums up a long list of authorities on both sides by the correct remark that a bramble must not be counted as a tree, and therefore _rubus_ follows the ordinary rule of words ending in _us_ and is masculine. On the difference between _despicere_ and _dispicere_ he has much to write, and in the course of his letter he makes free use of quotations from the Greek. From Epistle 254 we find that Charlemagne had inquired, through Candidus, as to the distinction between _aeternum_ and _sempiternum_; _perpetuum_ and _inmortale_; _saeculum_, _aevum_, and _tempus_. In Epistle 240, a very long letter, he writes to the emperor in reply to his inquiry as to the force of a question put by the Greek master—an Athenian sophist—about the price of human salvation.