Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/66

 46 THE DECLINE AND FALL The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate people ; and the Saracens must have raised the siege if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was accomplished with unrelenting rigour ; tired, rather than satiated, with destruction, he returned to his new [samarra, palacc of Samara, in the neiarhbourhood of Ba<jdad, while the ^tars^^^ ?////'o/-/«//a/r m Theophilus implored the tardy and doubtful aid of A.D. 83S £92] his Westcm rival, the emperor of the Franks. Yet in the siege of Araorium above seventy thousand Moslems had perished ; their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives, who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prisonei-s ; '^- but in the national religious conflict of the two empires peace was without confidence, and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the field ; those who escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude or exquisite torture ; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil.^^^ To a point of honour Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same caliph descended from his horse and dirtied his robe to relieve the distress of a decrepit old man, who with his laden ass had tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did '" In the East he was styled Auo-tux'j)? (Continuator Theophan. 1. iii. p. 84 [p. 13^, 1. 10, ed. Bonn]) ; but such was the ignorance of the West that his ambas- sadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes ccelitus fuerat assecutus (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, torn, iii. p. 720 [Pertz, Men. i. 434]). [For Samarra cp. Le Strange in Journal As. Soc. vol. 27, p. 36.] 112 Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 167, 168) relates one of these-singular transactions on the bridge of the river Lamus [Lamas Su] in Cilicia, the limit of the two em- pires, and one day's journey westward of Tarsus (d'Anville, Geographic Ancienne, torn. ii. p. 91). Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for an equal num- ber of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle of the bridge, and, when they reached their respective friends, they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same vear (..h. 231) the most illustrious of them, the forty-two martyrs, were beheaded by th.e caliph's order. [For exchanges of prisoners on the Lames see also Theoph. Contin. p. 443, ed. Bonn.] 11^ Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil, c. 61, p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity as pirates and renegadoes.