t Plutarch's Lives were
translated into Turkish for the use of Mahomet the Second.]

[Footnote 71: I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William Jones's
Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in octavo,) which
was composed in the youth of that wonderful linguist. At present, in
the maturity of his taste and judgment, he would perhaps abate of
the fervent, and even partial, praise which he has bestowed on the
Orientals.]

[Footnote 72: Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been
accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians, and the
Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle's Dictionary.) Each of these
sects would agree, that in two instances out of three, his contempt was
reasonable.]

[Footnote 73: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque, Orientale, p. 546.]

[Footnote 74: Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the emperor
refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of the caliph
Almamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in the same words by
the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 118.)]

In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks had
stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging their
limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the third caliph
of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the favorable opportunity,
while a woman and a child, Irene and Constantine, were seated on the
Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs
was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of
Harun, [75] or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful.
His encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her
troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their sovereign,
her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the exchange of some
royal gifts could not disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand
dinars of gold, which was imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens had
too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land: their
retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful
markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces
might be surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between
a slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this
expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and