“Alterum vero philosophorum genus est, quod Ionicum dicitur et a Graecis ulterioribus traxit originem. Horum princeps fuit Thales Milesius, unus illorum septem, qui dicti sunt sapientes. Iste cum rerum naturam scrutatus, inter caeteros emicuisset, maxime admirabilis exstitit, quod astrologiae numeris comprehensis, solis et lunae defectus praedicebat. Huic successit Anaximander ejus auditor, qui Anaximenem discipulum reliquit et successorem. Diogenes quoque ejusdem auditor exstitit, et Anaxagoras, qui omnium rerum quas videmus, effectorem divinum animum docuit. Ei successit auditor ejus Archelaüs, cujus discipulus Socrates fuisse perhibetur, magister Platonis, qui, teste Apuleio, prius Aristoteles dictus est, sed deinde a latitudine pectoris Plato, et in tantam eminentiam philosophiae, et vigore ingenii, et studii exercitio, et omnium morum venustate, eloquii quoque suavitate et copia subvectus est, ut quasi in throno sapientiae residens, praecepta quadam auctoritate visus est, tam antecessoribus quam successoribus philosophis, imperare. Et primus quidem Socrates universam philosophiam ad corrigendos componendosque mores flexisse memoratur, cum ante illum omnes physicis, id est rebus naturalibus perscrutandis, maximam operam dederint.”[264] These extracts from the writings of saints and scholars may be supplemented by two extracts from compositions of another class. The mediaeval chronicle has not a good reputation. Its credulity and uncritical spirit varied with the time and man. Little can be said in favour of its general form, which usually is stupidly chronological, or annalistic. The example of classical historical composition was lost on mediaeval annalists. Yet their work is not always dull; and, by the twelfth century, their diction had become as mediaeval as that of the theologian rhetoricians, although it rarely crystallizes to personal style by reason of the insignificance of the writers. A well-known work of this kind is the _Gesta Dei per Francos_, by Guibert of Nogent, who wrote his account of the First Crusade a few years after its turmoil had passed by. The following passage tells of proceedings upon the conclusion of Urban’s great crusading oration at the Council of Clermont in 1099: