Blake Lively

robbed of its cheese by the flattering fox. Though Aesop gave his name to collections of fables – the Isopet – he was not read but survived through his disciple, Phaedrus. Marie de France drew on a Latin compilation, the Romulus anglo-latin, for her 103 lively, pointed fables (c.1170). Exempla which used animals to illustrate human truths remained popular, and Reynard the Fox acquired a unique following. The sprawling Roman de Renard was as popular and enduring as the Roman de Tristan or the Roman de la

medieval tradition for its own sake, as a particular historical tradition within mathematics. Much of the medieval work which was supposedly important for Galileo does not seem to have featured in his reading; and although there was undoubtedly a lively argument in progress about mathematics and its certainty in sixteenth-century Italian universities (conducted very much along Aristotelian lines, what is more)6 it contributed much less to the shaping of mathematical practice than the two sources