science
must sink into obscurity and subordination. Its public existence will no
longer be tolerated. Indeed, it may be said that from this period for
some centuries it altogether disappeared. The leaden mace of bigotry had
struck and shivered the exquisitely tempered steel of Greek philosophy.
Cyril's acts passed unquestioned. It was now ascertained that throughout
the Roman world there must be no more liberty of thought. It had been
said that these events prove Greek philosophy to have been a sham, and,
like other shams, it was driven out of the world when detected, and that
it could not withstand the truth. Such assertions might answer their
purposes very well, so long as the victors maintained their power in
Alexandria, but they manifestly are of inconvenient application after
the Saracens had captured the city. However this may be, an intellectual
stagnation settled upon the place, an invisible atmosphere of
oppression, ready to crush down, morally and physically, whatever
provoked its weight. And so for the next two dreary and weary centuries
things remained, until oppression and force were ended by a foreign
invader. It was well for the world that the Arabian conquerors avowed
their true argument, the scimitar, and made no pretensions to superhuman
wisdom. They were thus left free to pursue knowledge without involving
themselves in theological contradictions, and were able to make Egypt
once more illustrious among the nations of the earth--to snatch it from
the hideous fanaticism, ignorance, and barbarism into which it had been
plunged. On the shore of the Red Sea once more a degree of the earth's
surface was to be measured, and her size ascertained--but by a
Mohammedan astronomer. In Alexandria the memory of the illustrious old
times was to be recalled by the discovery of the motion of the sun's
apogee by Albategnius, and the third inequality of the moon, the
variation, by Aboul Wefa; to be discovered six centuries later in Europe
by Tycho Brahe. The canal of the Pharaohs from the Nile to the Red Sea,
cleared out by the Ptolemies in former ages, was to be cleared from its
sand again. The glad desert listened once more to the cheerful cry of
the merchant camel-driver instead of the midnight prayer of the monk.

CHAPTER XI.

PREMATURE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.

THE THREE ATTACKS, VANDAL, PERSIAN, ARAB.

THE VANDAL ATTACK _leads to the Loss of Africa.--Recovery of
that Province by Ju