Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/117

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 95 the Euxine. The conscience of the empei'or was oppressed by the obligation of I'estoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had borrowed for their own defence ; a perpetual finid was required to satisfy these inexorable creditors ; the provinces, already wasted by the arms and avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a second payment of the same taxes ; and the ari'ears of a simple citizen, the treasurer of Damascus, were commuted to a fine of one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss of two hundred thousand soldiers '^'■''^ who had fallen by the sword was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and population, in this long and destructive war ; and, although a victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief: an ordinary and trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution. These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet ; their fanatic valour had emerged from the desert ; and in the last eight years of his reign Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the Persians. i26Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46) gives this number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isatcriati war, or this passage does not belong to the emperor Herachus.