It is scarcely necessary to point out what clear traces of the study and imitation of the classics this passage shows. The words ‘tendens ad sidera palmas’ are taken almost verbally from the Aeneid.
In his account of these semi-mythical events Cosmas wisely and conscientiously avoids attempting to define their dates chronologically; his method varies after the year 894, which he gives as the date of the conversion to Christianity of the Bohemian prince Bořivog. Still up to the year 1037, the year with which the first book of Cosmas’s chronicle ends, dates are only given occasionally and little reliance can be placed on them. Cosmas indeed admits this at the end of the first book. He states that in the earliest part of his narrative he had relied on but uncertain evidence, but he also declares that should he continue his chronicle he will henceforth only state certain and reliable facts. He writes: ‘Up to now I have dealt only with the events of the most ancient times, but as St. Jerome says: “Differently do we narrate the things we have seen, differently those we have heard, and differently again those that we have but imagined”; thus will we now better express what we know better, and henceforth with the aid of God and St. Adalbert we intend to narrate those events which we have either seen, or truthfully gathered from those who have seen them.’
This statement cannot, however, be considered as absolutely correct, at least with regard to the second book in which Palacký, whose Würdigung der alten böhmischen Geschichtschreiber—that is to say, appreciation of the ancient historians of Bohemia is still the standard authority on the subject, has discovered numerous chronological and other errors.
