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.