he Middle
Ages, while many much more important scientific books were allowed to
perish. A considerable bulk of scientific literature was also preserved
through the curious channels of Arabic and Armenian translations.
Reference has already been made to the Almagest of Ptolemy, which, as
we have seen, was translated into Arabic, and which was at a later
day brought by the Arabs into western Europe and (at the instance of
Frederick II of Sicily) translated out of their language into mediaeval
Latin.

It remains to inquire, however, through what channels the Greek works
reached the Arabs themselves. To gain an answer to this question we must
follow the stream of history from its Roman course eastward to the new
seat of the Roman empire in Byzantium. Here civilization centred from
about the fifth century A.D., and here the European came in contact
with the civilization of the Syrians, the Persians, the Armenians, and
finally of the Arabs. The Byzantines themselves, unlike the inhabitants
of western Europe, did not ignore the literature of old Greece; the
Greek language became the regular speech of the Byzantine people, and
their writers made a strenuous effort to perpetuate the idiom and style
of the classical period. Naturally they also made transcriptions of the
classical authors, and thus a great mass of literature was preserved,
while the corresponding works were quite forgotten in western Europe.

Meantime many of these works were translated into Syriac, Armenian, and
Persian, and when later on the Byzantine civilization degenerated, many
works that were no longer to be had in the Greek originals continued to
be widely circulated in Syriac, Persian, Armenian, and, ultimately,
in Arabic translations. When the Arabs started out in their conquests,
which carried them through Egypt and along the southern coast of the
Mediterranean, until they finally invaded Europe from the west by way
of Gibraltar, they carried with them their translations of many a Greek
classical author, who was introduced anew to the western world through
this strange channel.

We are told, for example, that Averrhoes, the famous commentator of
Aristotle, who lived in Spain in the twelfth century, did not know
a word of Greek and was obliged to gain his knowledge of the master
through a Syriac translation; or, as others alleged (denying that he
knew even Syriac), through an Arabic version translated from the Syriac.
We know, too, that the famous chr