Note 50 — Chapter II

Callinicus was either a native of Heliopolis, in Syria, or of Egypt. This clever chemist had been for a while in the service of the Khalif; but, offended at the slight estimation in which his science was held by the ignorant sons of the desert, he went over to the emperor, and placed in the hands of the Christians that marvellous and mysterious agent, the Greek fire, which afterwards repeatedly saved Constantinople from falling into the hands of its barbarian besiegers. It is certainly a curious coincidence, that, at a later period of history, Sultan Mohammed II. was most materially assisted in the reduction of the city of the Cæsars, by another man of science, the Hungarian Urban, who, having been almost starved in the Greek service, had deserted to the Moslems, for whom he cast cannons of enormous size and weight of metal.