Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/345

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 331 The imperial slave was eager to secure the favour of C H A P. his master, by an act of treason to his native country. ' He conducted Sapor over the Euphrates, and by the Sapor over- way of Chalcis to the metropolis of the east. So rapid ciHciarand were the motions of the Persian cavalry, that, if we tjappado- may credit a very judicious historian*^, the city of An- tioch was surprised when the idle multitude was fondly gazing on the amusements of the theatre. The splen- did buildings of Antioch, private as well as public, were either pillaged or destroyed ; and the numerous inhabitants were put to the sword, or led away into captivity ^, The tide of devastation was stopped for a moment by the resolution of the high priest of Emesa. Arrayed in his sacerdotal robes, he appeared at the head of a great body of fanatic peasants, armed only with slings, and defended his god and his property from the sacrilegious hands of the followers of Zo- roaster*. But the ruin of Tarsus, and of many other cities, furnishes a melancholy proof that, except in this singular instance, the conquest of Syria and Cilicia scarcely interrupted the progress of the Persian arms. The advantages of the narrow passes of mount Taurus were abandoned, in which an invader, whose principal force consisted in his cavalry, would have been engaged in a very unequal combat : and Sapor was permitted to form the siege of Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia ; a city, though of the second rank, which was supposed to contain four hundred thousand inhabitants. De- mosthenes commanded in the place, not so much by the commission of the emperor, as in the voluntary defence of his country. For a long time he deferred its fate; and, when at last Caesarea was betrayed by the perfidy of a physician, he cut his way through the Persians, who had been ordered to exert their utmost diligence to take him alive. This heroic chief escaped •^ The sack of Antioch, anticipated by some historians, is assigned, by the decisive testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus, to the reign of Gallienus: xxiii. 5. •! Zosimus, 1. i. p. 35. ^ John Malala, torn. i. p. 391. He corrupts this probable event by some fabulous circumstances. VOL. I. y