OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 29 West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and declined.*'* In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the Their real r 1 • 111 ji progress In tar greater part oi the innumerable volumes were possessed only ths sciences of local value or imaginary merit /^ The shelves were crowded with orators and poets, whose style was adapted to the taste and manners of their countrymen ; with general and partial histories, which each revolving generation supplied with a new harvest of persons and events ; with codes and commentaries of jurisprudence, which derived their authority from the law of the prophet ; with the interpreters of the Koran and ortho- dox tradition ; and with the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the different estimate of sceptics or believers. The works of speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of Greece were translated and illustrated in the Arabic language, and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered in the versions of the East,^ which possessed and studied the writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apol- lonius, of Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. ^" Among the ideal
- ■'* These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana
(torn. ii. p. 38, 71, 201, 202), Leo Africanus (de Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot. Grasc. toni. xiii. p. 259-298, particularly p. 274), and Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 274, 275, 536, 537), besides the chronological remarks of Abulpharagius. "•'■' The Arabic catalogue of the Escurial will give a just idea of the proportion of the classes. In the library of Cairo, the Mss. of astronomy and medicine amounted to 6500, with two fair globes, the one of brass, the other of silver (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 417). '•'5 As for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh books (the eighth is still wanting) of the Conic ISections of Apollonius Pergseus [flor. circa, 200 B.C.], which were printed from the Florence Ms. 1661 (P'abric. Bibliot. Grasc. tom. ii. p. 559). Yet the fifth book had been previously restored by the mathematical divination of Viviani (see his Eloge in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 59, S:c.). [The first 4 books of the KioyiKa crroixeia are preserved in Greek. Editions by Halley, 1710; Heiberg, 1888.] ^'The merit of these Arabic versions is freely discussed by Renaudot (Fabric. Bibliot. Gr.-EC. tom. i. p. 812-816), and piously defended by Gasira (Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238-240). Most of the versions of Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are ascribed to Honain [Ibn Ishak, a native of Hira], a physician of the Nestorian sect, who flourished at Bagdad in the court of the caliphs, and died A.D. 876 [874]. He was at the head of a school or manufacture of translations, and the works of his sons and disciples were published under his name. See Abulpharagius, (Dynast, p. 88, 115, 171-174, and apud Asseman, Bibliot. Orient, tom. ii. p. 438), d'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 456), Asseman (Bibliot. Orient, tom. iii. p. 164), and Casiri, Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238, &c. , 251, 286-290, 302, 304, &c. [See also Wenrich, de auctorum Graccorum versionibus et commentariis Syriacis, 1842; J. Lippert, Studien auf dem Gebiete der griechisch-arabischen Uebersctzungs- Litteratur, pt. i, 1894. On Arabic versions from Latin, see Wiistenfeld, Die Uebersetzungen arab. Werke in das Lat. seit dem xi. Jahrh., in Abh, d, k. Ges, d. Wiss. zu GiJttingen, vol. 22, 1877.]
