Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/462

 440 THE DECLINE AND FALL judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact, since they were invincible in opinion ; and the desertion of Youkinna, his false repentance and repeated perfidy, might justify the suspi- cion of the emperor that he was encompassed by traitors and apostates who conspired to betray his person and their country to the enemies of Christ. In the hour of adversity, his supersti- tion was agitated by the omens and dreams of a falling crown ; and, after bidding an eternal farewell to Syria, he secretly em- barked with a few attendants and absolved the faith of his subjects. ^^^ Constantine, his eldest son, had been stationed with forty thousand men at Csesarea, the civil metropolis of the three provinces of Palestine. But his private interest recalled him to the Byzantine court ; and, after the flight of his father, he felt himself an unequal champion to the united force of the caliph. His vanguard was boldly attacked by three hundred Arabs and a thousand black slaves, who, in the depth of winter, had climbed the snowy mountains of Libanus, and who were speedily followed by the victorious squadrons of Caled himself. From the north and south, the troops of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the sea-shore, till their banners were joined under the walls of the Phoenician cities : Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed ; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered without distrust the captive harbours, brought a seasonable supply of arms and provisions to the camp of the Saracens. Their labours were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Caesarea : ^^^ the Roman prince had embarked in the night ; ^^^ and the defenceless citizens solicited 104 See Ockley (vol. i. p. 308, 312), who laughs at the credulity of his author. When Heraclius bade farewell to Syria, Vale Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied that the Romans should never re-enter the province till the birth of an inauspicious child, the future scourge of the empire. Abulfeda, p. 68. I am perfectly ignorant of the mystic sense, or nonsense, of this prediction. i^s [Theophanes gives A. D. 642 (sui A. M. 6133) as date of capture of Csesarea. Ibn Abd al Hakam places it in the year of the death of Heraclius (a.h. 20, A.D. 641). John of Nikiu (tr. Zotenberg, p. 569) mentions the capture of Kilunas as syn- chronous with events in Egypt of A.D. 641, but it is gratuitous to identify this mysterious place with Caesarea. Kilunas is far more likely to be a corruption of Ascalon (and this conjecture may be supported by al-Biladhuri, p. ii. ap. Weil, loc. <riV.).] 106 In the loose and obsure chronology of the times, I am guided by an authentic record (in the book of ceremonies of Constantine Porphyrogenitus) which certifies that, June 4, A.D. 638, the emperor crowned his younger son Heraclius [or Hera- clonas] in the presence of his eldest Constantine, and in the palace of Constanti- nople ; that January i, A.D. 639, the royal procession visited the great church, and, on the 4th of the same month, the hippodrome. [Bk. ii., c. 27, 28 ; p. 627-9, ^^^ Bonn. The flight of Heraclius is probably to be placed in A.D. 636; cp. Weil, op. cit. p. 79. Theophanes places it in A.D. 633.]