[34] Professor Bryce considers that the first extant mention of the Donation of Constantine is contained in the letter of Pope Hadrian 1. to Charlemagne, dated A.D. 777 (_Holy Roman Empire_, ch. vii. p. 112 note, 4th ed.). If so, the allusion is couched in very general and obscure terms. Döllinger, who dates the letter in question 775, holds that it refers not to what is commonly understood by the Donation of Constantine, but to gifts of land in various parts of Italy, afterwards seized by the Lombards. The forgery of the Donation would appear to be later than 750, but prior to 774, as it refers to the state of things existing before the first Frankish settlement in Italy, which took place in 774. In any case, it is later than the time of Adamnán. [35] Philip succeeded to Gordian III. in 224, but was not his son, being an Arab. He favoured the Christians, and corresponded with Origen, whence arose a report, countenanced by Eusebius, that he had embraced Christianity, but for this there is no authority. [36] [Uncial: Taiṫleċ], so W. S. [37] [Uncial: Suṫi]. So Windisch, though W. S. trans. ‘fruitfulness (?).’ [38] Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his _Essay on the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth_, appended to Prof. Kuno Meyer’s _Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, 1895-7, points out that in Greece and Ireland alone of Aryan nations the Elysium legend existed devoid of any eschatological belief (i. 329). [39] See _Odyssey_, xi. 36 _sqq._; 222, 391 _sqq._; 488 _sqq._ This gloomy impression is little mitigated by mention of the ‘Asphodelian meadow’ in which the dead reside (_Od._ xi. 539; xxiv. 13). [40] See, in particular, Homer, _Odyssey_, iv. 563; Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 110, 166; Pindar, _Olympiad_, ii. 68, 120, which last, perhaps, contains the most finished picture of the Elysium drawn by the earlier poets. [41] It would be possible to cull from the Greek writers a great wealth of allusions to the Otherworld; not only, however, do exigencies of space forbid this, but they are hardly pertinent to the present subject, for the reasons mentioned in the text. Still less need we enter into the burlesque descriptions of an Otherworld, conceived as a Land of Cockayne, several of which are preserved in fragments of the comic poets.