He may, also, have had in view the fact that he has prefixed a narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus and of John and so begun the history at what he considered to be its true point of departure; to this he plainly alludes when he says that he has "traced the course of all things accurately from the first."
Several other species of alumen are described by Pliny, but we are unable to make out to what minerals he alludes.
Only one Greek author, Herodotus, alludes to the prehistoric Cappadocian power and only at the latest moment of its long decline.
He also pointedly alludes to John's work and the people's relation to it, in many sayings and parables (sometimes in a tone of irony).
But the address and the expression in the italicized passage just quoted (which evidently alludes to the vaunting epistle of 1165) hardly leave room for doubt that the pope supposed himself to be addressing the author of that letter.
