The first branch of the Trivium was Grammar, which included literature by way of illustration; and he who held the chair had the title of _grammaticus_. For the beginners, _Donatus_ was the text-book, and _Priscianus_ for the more advanced.[380] Nor was Martianus Capella neglected. The student annotated these works with citations from the _Etymologies_ of Isidore. Divers mnemotechnic processes assisted him to commit the contents to memory. The grammatical course included the writing of compositions in prose and verse, according to rule, and the reading of classic authors. For their school verses in metre the pupils used Bede’s _De arte metrica_, an encyclopaedia of metrical forms. They also wrote accentual and rhymed Latin verse. Of profane authors the Library appears to have contained Livy, Valerius Maximus, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Statius, Servius the commentator on Virgil; and of writers who were Christian Classics in the Middle Ages, Orosius, Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus, Sedulius, Arator, Prudentius, and Boëthius, the last named being the most important single source of early mediaeval education. Rhetoric, the second branch of the Trivium, bore that vague relationship to grammar which it bears in modern parlance. The rules of the rhetoricians were learned; the works of profane or Christian orators were read and imitated. This study left its mark on mediaeval sermons and _Vitae Sanctorum_. As for the third branch, Dialectic, Fulbert’s pupils studied the logical treatises in general use in the earlier Middle Ages: to wit, the _Categories_ and the _De interpretatione_ of Aristotle, and Porphyry’s _Introduction_, all in the Latin of Boëthius. For works which might be regarded as commentaries upon these, the school had at its disposal the _Categories_ ascribed to Augustine and Apuleius’s _De interpretatione_, Cicero’s _Topica_, and Boëthius’s discussion of definition, division, and categorical and hypothetical syllogisms--the logical writings expounded by Gerbert at Rheims. The school had likewise Gerbert’s own _Libellus de ratione uti_ and Boëthius’s _De consolatione_, that chief ethical compend for the early Middle Ages; also the writings of Eriugena, and Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena’s translation. Whether or not it possessed the current Latin version of Plato’s _Timaeus_, Fulbert and Berengar at all events refer to Plato in terms of eulogy.