[100] ‘A little below Orsova the Danube issues from the Iron Gate, and at a village called Severin, where it expands to a width of 1,300 yards, the foundations of the piers, corresponding in number with the statement of the historian, have been seen when the water was more than usually low. Here, then, as is now generally agreed, stood the bridge of Trajan’s architect, Apollodorus.’—Merivale, _History of the Romans_, chap. lxiii. [101] Galen, the great physician, who flourished in the second century of our era. Busbecq’s allusion to him is quite in accordance with the fashion of his day. See Ranke’s _Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_, chap. xix. ‘Peter de la Ramée wished to forsake in all things the path hitherto trodden, to alter the entire system of doctors and professors in the university, and to make the works of the ancients the immediate text-books of the different branches of study,—the codex of the civil law in jurisprudence, Galen and Hippocrates in medicine, and in theology the Old and New Testaments.... Physicians arose who brought into practice once more the deserted rules of Hippocrates; and it soon went so far, as Ambrose Paré, the reformer of surgery, said, that people were not content with what they found in the ancients, but began to regard their writings as watch-towers, from which more might be discovered.’ For Busbecq’s application of these principles see the Life. [102] An ‘aspre’ or ‘asper’ is still the lowest coin in Turkey. At the present rate of exchange a penny is worth nearly 100 aspres, but in Busbecq’s time the Turkish coinage had a considerably higher value. [103] See Ranke’s _Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_, chap. xiv. ‘As he (the Prince of Condé) had distinguished himself by his bravery in the field, he now desired to shine through his versatility, by taking part in the knightly festivities of the court, in which it was the fashion to _represent the heroic fables of the Greeks_.’ It would seem that it was the fashion in high circles to appear on certain occasions in the dress and character of Greek heroes and heroines. [104] John Cantacuzenus became Emperor 1341, and abdicated 1354. His son Matthew was associated with him. His descendants have given many princes to Moldavia and Wallachia. The Palæologi held the Empire 1282-1453 (see Gibbon, chap. lxii., and following chapters). Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, when banished from his kingdom became a schoolmaster at Corinth.