Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/92

 70 THE DECLINE AND FALL The first intelligence from the P!Last which Heraclius re- ceived "- 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 [A.D. 012] more fortunate in the sack of Ca?sarea, the capital of Cappa- docia ; and, as they advanced beyond the ramparts of the frontier, the boundary of ancient war, they found a less obstinate resistance and a more j)lentiful 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 [A.D GU] Roman empire ; but Chosroes reposed his troops in the para- dise of Damascus before he ascended the hills of Libanus or invaded the cities of the Phoenician coast. The conquest o' Palestine, of Jerusalem,"' which had been meditated by Nushirvan, was achieved by the zeal and avarice of 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 Hames ; the devout offerings of three hundred years were rifled in one sacrilegious day ; the patriarch Zach- ariah, and the true croxs, 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 "2 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 Heet laden with vegetables for the relief of Constantinople (Annal. torn. ii. p. 223, 224). The other Christians of the East, Barhebraeus (apud Asseman. Bibliothec. Oriental, torn. iii. p.^ 412, 413), Elmacin (Hist. Saracen, p. 13-16), Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 98, 99), are more sincere and accurate. The years of the Persian war are disposed in the chronology of Pagi. "i^ On the conquest of Jerusalem, an event so interesting to the church, see the Annals of F'utychius (torn. ii. p. 212-223) ^'""^ 'he lamentations of the monk Antiochus (apud Baronium, Annal. Eccles. ..T>. 614, No. 16-26), whose one hundred and twenty-nine homilies are still e.tant, if what no one reads may be said to be extant.