Meanwhile the utter confusion consequent upon the downfall of the Roman Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost. Smaragdus, a grammarian, mistook _Eunuchus Comoedia_ and _Orestes Tragoedia_, mentioned by Donatus, for the names of authors. Remigius of Auxerre explained _poema_ by _positio_, and _emblema_ by _habundantia_. Homer and Virgil were supposed to have been friends and contemporaries, while the Latin epitome of the 'Iliad,' bearing the name of Pindar, was fathered on the Theban lyrist. Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies like that of language came to be regarded as an open field for the exercise of the mythologising fancy; and etymology was reduced to a system of ingenious punning. _Voluntas_ and _voluptas_ were distinguished, for example, as pertaining to the nature of _Deus_ and _diabolus_ respectively; and, in order to make the list complete, _voluntas_ was invented as an attribute of _homo_. It is clear that on this path of verbal quibbling the intellect had lost tact, taste, and common sense together. When the minds of the learned were possessed by these absurdities to the exclusion of sound method, we cannot wonder that antiquity survived but as a strange and shadowy dream in popular imagination. Virgil, the only classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness into a wizard,[16] he waited on the extreme verge of the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and Purgatory. [Footnote 16: The common use of the word _grammarie_ for occult science in our ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So does the legend of Friar Bacon. See Thoms, _Early English Prose Romances_.]