learned of the philosophy of Aristotle. His philosophy was known, at first, only through the writings of Boethius. But the growing enthusiasm for it created a demand for his complete works. Greek texts were wanting. But the Latins heard that the Arabs, too, were great admirers of Peripatetism, and that they possessed translations of Aristotle's works and commentaries thereon. This led them finally to search for and translate Arabic manuscripts. During this search, mathematical works also came to their notice, and were translated into Latin. Though some few unimportant works may have been translated earlier, yet the period of greatest activity began about 1100. The zeal displayed in acquiring the Mohammedan treasures of knowledge excelled even that of the Arabs themselves, when, in the eighth century, they plundered the rich coffers of Greek and Hindoo science.
Among the earliest scholars engaged in translating manuscripts into Latin was Athelard of Bath. The period of his activity is the first quarter of the twelfth century. He travelled extensively in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Spain, and braved a thousand perils, that he might acquire the language and science of the Mohammedans. He made the earliest translations, from the Arabic, of Euclid's Elements and of the astronomical tables of Mohammed ben Musa Hovarezmi. In 1857, a manuscript was found in the library at Cambridge, which proved to be the arithmetic by Mohammed ben Musa in Latin. This translation also is very probably due to Athelard.
At about the same time flourished Plato of Tivoli or Plato Tiburtinus, He effected a translation of the astronomy of Al Battani and of the Sphœrica of Theodosius. Through the former, the term sinus was introduced into trigonometry.
About the middle of the twelfth century there was a group of Christian scholars busily at work at Toledo, under the
