Why Isidore in (a) does not give the natural derivation from χορδή is not clear unless his knowledge of Greek was very slight. λυρεῖν, in (b), is a form that is not found in Greek. In (c) _camur_ is not a Greek word written in Roman letters, as Isidore apparently thought. See Harper’s _Latin Dictionary_. Compare also the form in which Aristotle’s περὶ ἑρμηνείας is cited: _de perihermeniis_, _praefatio perihermeniarum_, _in libro perihermeniarum_ (2, 27). Isidore’s Greek has given his editors much trouble. See Migne, _Patr. Lat._ 81, 328, for comment upon it by Vulcanius, who edited the _Etymologies_ in 1577. What aspects, then, of the Latin literary tradition, which alone has to be taken into account, are of importance as giving an understanding of Isidore and his works? To him, no doubt, the literary past seemed to be filled chiefly with the succession of Christian writers from Tertullian to Gregory the Great. These, starting out with a religion to which a primitive cosmology was tenaciously attached, were really engaged in amalgamating with it the less hostile items of the Graeco-Roman intellectual inheritance. Men like Augustine were occupied in de-secularizing the knowledge of their times; that is, in reshaping it so that it should fill a subordinate place in the religious scheme and so support that scheme, or at least not be in opposition to it. Orosius’ feat of reshaping history so that it was subservient to religion, is a good example of what was going on in every field. Such secular knowledge as was allowed to exist was brought into more or less close relation to the religious ideas that dominated thinkers, and whatever could not be thus reshaped tended to be rejected and forgotten. The nearest approach to an exception to this is found in the subjects that had formed the educational curriculum of the Greeks and Romans. These offered robust opposition to de-secularization; and though they were attenuated to almost nothing, they succeeded in maintaining their separate existence. This process of de-secularization was about complete by the time of Cassiodorus; in him we have an intellectual outlook that recognizes, outside of the religious scheme, only the seven liberal arts.[45] [45] See p. 83.