XLVI. test: but he submitted without a murmur to the cHAP. fortune of his friend, and his laudable intentions were rewarded with an equestrian statue, and a daughter of the emperor. It was more difficult to trust the fidelity of Crispus, whose recent services were recompensed by the command of the Cappadocian army. His arrogance soon provoked, and seemed to excuse, the ingratitude of his new sovereign. In the presence of the senate, the son-inlaw of Phocas was condemned to embrace the monastic life; and the sentence was justified by the weighty observation of Heraclius, that the man who had betrayed his father, could never be faithful to his friend *. pi AC invades the Roman empire, A. D. 603. &C Even after his death the republic was afflicted Chosroes by the crimes of Phocas, which armed with a ous cause the most formidable of her enemies. cording to the friendly and equal forms of the Byzantine and Persian courts, he announced his exaltation to the throne; and his ambassador Lilius, who had presented him with the heads of Maurice and his sons, was the best qualified to describe the circumstances of the tragic scene †. However it might be varnished by fiction or sophistry, Chos roes See the tyranny of Phocas and the elevation of Heraclius, in Chron. Paschal. p. 380-383. Theophanes, p. 242-250. Nicephorus, p. 37. Cedrenus, p. 404-407. Zonaras, tom. ii. 1. xiv. p. 80-82. + Theophylact, 1. viii. c. 15. The life of Maurice was composed about the year 628 (1. viii. c. 13. by l'heophylact Simocatta, ex præfect, a native of Egypt. Photius, who gives an ample extract of the work (cod. lxv. p. 81-100.), gently reproves the affectation and allegory of the style. His preface is a dialogue between Philosophy and History; they seat themselves under a plane-tree, and the latter touches her lyre. XLVI. CHA P. roes turned with horror from the assassin, imprisoned the pretended envoy, disclaimed the usurper, and declared himself the avenger of his father and benefactor. The sentiments of grief and resentment which humanity would feel, and honour would dictate, promoted, on this occasion, the interest of the Persian king; and his interest was powerfully magnified by the national and religious prejudices of the Magi and satraps. In a strain of artful adulation, which assumed the language of freedom, they presumed to censure the excess of gratitude and friendship for the Greeks; a nation with whom it was dangerous to conclude either peace or alliance; whose superstition was devoid of truth and justice, and who must be incapable of any virtue, since they could perpetrate the most atrocious of crimes, the impious murder of their sovereign*. For the crime of an ambitious centurion, the nation which he oppressed was chastised with the calamities of war; and the same calamities, at the end of twenty years, were retaliated and redoubled on the heads of the Persians †. The ge neral .... Christianis nec pactum esse, nec fidem nec fœdus. quod si ulla illis fides suisset, regem suum non occidissent. Eutych. Annales, tom. ii. p. 211. vers. Pocock. + We must how, for some ages, take our leave of contemporary historians, and descend, it it be a descent, from the affectation of rhetoric to the rude simplicity of chronicles and abridgments. Those of Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 244279.) and Nicephorus p. 3-16.) supply a regular, but imperfect series of the Persian war; and for any additional facts I quote my special authorities. Theophanes, a courtier who became a monk, was born A D. 748; Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople, who died A. D. 829, was somewhat younger: they both suffered in the cause of images Hankius de Scriptoribus Byzantinis, p. 200—246. XLVI. neral who had restored Chosroes to the throne still c HA P. commanded in the East; and the name of Narses was the formidable sound with which the Assyrian mothers were accustomed to terrify their infants. It is not improbable, that a native subject of Persia should encourage his master and his friend to deliver and possess the provinces of Asia. It is still more probable, that Chosroes should animate his troops by the assurance that the sword which they dreaded the most would remain in its scabbard, or be drawn in their favour. The hero could not depend on the faith of a tyrant; and the tyrant was conscious how little he deserved the obedience of an hero: Narses was removed from his military command; he reared an independent standard at Hierapolis in Syria: he was betrayed by fallacious promises, and burnt alive in the market-place of Constantinople. Deprived of the only chief whom they could fear or esteem, the bands which he had led to victory were twice broken by the cavalry, trampled by the elephants, and pierced by the arrows of the Barbarians; and a great number of the captives were beheaded on the field of battle by the sentence of the victor, who might justly condemn these seditious mercenaries as the authors or accomplices of the death of Maurice. Under the reign of Phocas, the fortifications of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed, by the Persian monarch: he His conpassed the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian cities, Syria, Hierapolis, Chalchis, and Berrhæa or Aleppo, and A. D. 611, soon encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The rapid tide of success dis closes quest of CHA P. closes the decay of the empire, the incapacity of XLVI. Phocas, and the disaffection of his subjects; and Chosroes provided a decent apology for their submission or revolt, by an impostor who attended his camp, as the son of Maurice* and the lawful heir of the monarchy. The first intelligence from the East which Heraclius received †, was that of the loss of Antioch; but the aged metropolis, so often overturned by earthquakes and pillaged by the enemy, could supply but a small and languid stream of treasure and blood. The Persians were equally successful and more fortunate in the sack of Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia ; and as they advanced beyond the ramparts of the frontier, the boundary of ancient war, they found a less obstinate resistance and a more plentiful harvest. The pleasant vale of Damascus has been adorned in every age with a royal city; her obscure felicity has hitherto escaped the historian of the Roman empire: but Chosroes reposed his troops in the paradise of Damascus be fore *The Persian historians have been themselves deceived; but Theophanes, (p. 244.) accuses Chosroes of the fraud and falsehood; and Eutychius believes (Annal. tom. ii. p. 211.) that the son of Maurice who was saved from the assassins, lived and died a monk on' mount Sinai. + Eutychius dates all the losses of the empire under the reign of Phocas, an error which saves the honour of Heraclius, whom he brings not from Carthage, but Salonica, with a fleet laden with vegetables for the relief of Constantinople (Annal. tom. ii. p. 223, 224.). The other Christians of the East, Barhebræus (apud Asseman, Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 412, 413.), Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16.), Abulphara gius (Dynast. p. 98, 99.) are more sincere and accurate. The years of the Persian war are disposed in the chronology of Pagi. XLVI. of Pales fore he ascended the hills of Libanus, or invaded c H A P. the cities of the Phoenician coast. The conquest of Jerusalem, which had been meditated by Nushirvan, was achieved by the zeal and avarice of tine, A. D. 614. his grandson; the ruin of the proudest monument of Christianity was vehemently urged by the intolerant spirit of the Magi; and he could enlist, for this holy warfare, an army of six and twenty thousand Jews, whose furious bigotry, might compensate, in some degree, for the want of valour and discipline. After the reduction of Galilee, and the region beyond the Jordan, whose resistance appears to have delayed the fate of the capital, Jerusalem itself was taken by assault. the sepulchre of Christ, and the stately churches of Helena and Constantine, were consumed, or at least damaged, by the flames; the devout offerings of three hundred years were rifled in one sacrilegious day; the patriarch Zachariah, and the true cross, were transported into Persia; and the massacre of ninety thousand Christians is imputed to the Jews and Arabs who swelled the disorder of the Persian march. The fugitives of Palestine were entertained at Alexandria by the charity of John the archbishop, who is distinguished among a crowd of saints by the epithet of almsgiver; and the revenues of the church, with a treasure * On the conquest of Jerusalem, an event so interesting to the church, see the Annals of Eutychius (tom. ii. p. 212223.) and the lamentations of the monk Antiochus (apud Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 614, No. 16-26.) whose one hundred and twenty-nine homilies are still extant, if what no one reads may be said to be extant. The life of this worthy saint is composed by Leontius, a contemporary bishop; and I find in Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A. D. |