Sometimes detailed or fanciful etymologies are used as excursuses. This was used as early as the 5th Century BC by the poet Pindar. The most famous case of etymologies being used as excursuses is in the Golden Legend (ca. 1260) of Jacobus de Voragine, in which the life of each saint is proceeded by an etymology about the origin of the saint's name.
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But of so great a mass of material he has chosen only what is most useful and necessary. In effect, the questions that seemed most useful and necessary to ecclesiastical persons at Constantinople in the ninth century are those that are discussed. There are copious pious reflections and theological excursuses. He writes of how idols were invented, the origin of monks, the religion of the Saracens, and especially of the Iconoclast controversy that had just ended.
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He was one of the most learned and also most productive poets of his time, although not all his works are preserved. Those that are, were distinguished by grace and sincerity in the narration, strict morality and technical mastery. He himself describes Gottfried von Strassburg as his ideal; this is quite credible, as he sometimes quotes literally from "Tristan". He also adopted Gottfried's technique of making literary excursuses in which he names works of contemporaries and of his own.
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Ibn Ezra's commentaries, and especially some of the longer excursuses, contain numerous contributions to the philosophy of religion. One work in particular that belongs to this province, Yesod Mora ("Foundation of Awe"), on the division and the reasons for the Biblical commandments, he wrote in 1158 for a London friend, Joseph ben Jacob. In his philosophical thought neoplatonic ideas prevail; and astrology also had a place in his view of the world. He also wrote various works on mathematical and astronomical subjects.
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Dividing his material by centuries, Biner treats of the various species of law, of the history of the church councils, of the political and religious vicissitudes of the various nations, of treaties and concordats, etc. Interspersed in the work are many valuable excursuses on Jansenism, Probabilism, Public Penance, Origin of Imperial Electors, etc. However the work is rendered less valuable for students by a nonsystematic arrangement of material and the want of an index. The vastness of the knowledge which Biner displays, however, has received praise even from his opponents.
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An excursus (from Latin excurrere, 'to run out of') is a short episode or anecdote in a work of literature. Often excursuses have nothing to do with the matter being discussed by the work, and are used to lighten the atmosphere in a tragic story, a similar function to that of satyr plays in Greek theatre. Sometimes they are used to provide backstory to the matter being discussed at hand, as in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke. In the Middle Ages, the excursus is a favourite rhetorical devise to allow the narrator to comment or to suspend the action for reflection.
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The poem makes a human and existential drama out of a simple act of animal predation and ultimately can only be comic or absurd. The first known example of this narrative idea, exploited for full ironic effect in the genre, is Chaucer's mock heroic Nun's Priest's Tale which Henryson almost certainly used as a source. Chaucer also featured in his poem a long and profoundly comic set of excursuses on dream prediction delivered by the (well-read) victim of the farmyard crime. Henryson's version, which is shorter and more concise, sticks chiefly to the main action but still maintains the complexity of effect which Chaucer demonstrated was possible.
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The first book of the History, after a brief review of early Greek history and some programmatic historiographical commentary, seeks to explain why the Peloponnesian War broke out when it did and what its causes were. Except for a few short excursuses (notably 6.54–58 on the Tyrant Slayers), the remainder of the History (books 2 through 8) rigidly maintains its focus on the Peloponnesian War to the exclusion of other topics. While the History concentrates on the military aspects of the Peloponnesian War, it uses these events as a medium to suggest several other themes closely related to the war. It specifically discusses in several passages the socially and culturally degenerative effects of war on humanity itself.
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