THE LEGACY OF THE GREEKS 155 



translated, and subjected to exhaustive commentary. The 

 measure of the earth was again undertaken. Astronomy again 

 found high favour. Men of learning were again held in honour. 



The making of books became a trade. In Bagdad, Honian 

 set up the earliest publishing house of which we know. The 

 study of mathematics was again ardently prosecuted, our 

 modern algebra developed. 



Familiar Omar Khayyam may serve as a type of the time. 

 He seems to have been a singularly accomplished and gifted 

 man. He was by profession a mathematician and an astronomer, 

 wrote a treatise upon algebra, calculated elaborate astronomical 

 tables, still of value, and reformed the calendar. This was at the 

 command of the Sultan, Jalal-u-din, and his chronology was 

 known as the Jalali era. Gibbon refers to it as " a computa- 

 tion of time which surpasses the Julian and approaches the accu- 

 racy of the Gregorian style." It will be recalled that he was the 

 friend in youth of Al-Hassan, a powerful and evil genius, who 

 became the founder of the famous and infamous sect of the 



% 



Assassins. With Hassan he rose to high favour at the court, 

 and as he seemed to covet little and enjoy much, he must have 

 passed an unwontedly serene and agreeable existence. The 

 ancient chronicles refer to him as " The King of the Wise," 

 " in science unrivalled, a very paragon of his age." His poetry 

 must have been a diversion ; he seems to have been one of 

 the rare instances known to literature of an intellect of a really 

 high order, commanding the full knowledge of his time, and 

 united with a true poetic gift. Beside him Lucretius and Goethe, 

 in a more restricted sense Tennyson and Leconte de Lisle, are 

 among the few conspicuous examples which could be cited. 



Omar was not merely a poet and man of science ; he was a 

 philosopher as well. His tenets perhaps most resembled those 

 of Epicurus. With the latter he might have inscribed over the 

 door of his garden the legend reported by Seneca : Hospes hie 

 bene manebis ; hie summum bonum voluptas est (" Tarry, stranger ! 

 here pleasure lords the day "). But on the whole he was not so 

 much an Epicurean as a complete hedonist. His philosophy of 

 life bore as much resemblance to the chaste and reticent stanzas 

 that FitzGerald fashioned for the edification of young minds of 

 both sexes as the life and teachings of Sakya-Muni to the late 

 Sir Edwin Arnold's beguiling romance in verse. He was a 

 frank sensualist, and as utter an infidel as ever roamed the 



