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 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 69 calamities of war ; and the same calamities, at the end of twenty yearsj were retaliated and redoubled on the heads of the Per- sians."'^ The general who had restored Chosroes to the throne still commanded in the East ; and the name of Narses was the formidable sound with which the Assyrian mothers were accus- tomed 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 [a.d. co4] 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 wei'e 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 sen- tence 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 Mer- [Daras lost AD 608] din, Dara, Amida, and Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed, by the Persian monarch ; he passed His conquest the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian cities, Hierapolis, Chalcis, ad. en' and Bercea or Aleppo, and soon encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The rapid tide of success discloses the decay of the empire, the incapacity of Phocas, and the disaffection of his subjects ; and Chosroes provided a decent apology for their subinission or revolt, by an impostor who attended his camp as the son of Maurice ~^ and the lawful heir of the monarchy. "" We must now, for some ages, take our leave of contemporary historians, and descend, if it be a descent, from the affectation of rhetoric to the rude simplicity of chronicles and abridgments. Those of Theophanes (Chronograph, p. 244-279) and Nicephorus (p. 3-16) supply a regular, but miperfect serii's, 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. [See Appendix i.] ''1 The Persian historians have been themselves deceived ; but Theophanes (p. 244. [a.m. 6095]) accuses Chosroes of the fraud and falsehood ; and Eutychius be- lieves (Annal. tom. ii. p. 211) that the son of Maurice, who was saved from the assassins, lived and died a monk on mount Sinai.