Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/419

Rh near the junction of the Little Zab and the Tigris. There he was attacked and routed by the emperor, in the month of December, 627, and an immense booty remained in the hands of the victors. A few days afterwards Heraclius took Dastagerd or Artemita, not far from Ctesiphon, which was the favourite residence of Chosroes, and the numerous palaces of the king in the neighbourhood of that town were likewise taken and plundered. The booty was so great as to baffle description, though we must not believe the Arabic historians when they say that in the treasury of Dastagerd the king used annually to deposit the greater part of the income of the empire, which amounted to two hundred millions of pounds sterling, and that the Greek emperor found in the treasury a thousand chests full of diamonds and other precious stones. Chosroes fled to Seleuceia, and thence into the in- terior of Persia. The only army left to him was that of Sarbar, and he sent messengers to Chalce- don to urge his immediate return. The messengers were intercepted, but Heraclius ordered them to be released, taking care, however, to substitute an- other letter for that written by the king, in which it was said that the king was victorious on all sides, and that Sarbar might continue the siege of Chalcedon.

The protracted absence of Sarbar in such a critical moment was certain proof of high treason in the eyes of the Persian king, and a confident officer was despatched into the camp of Chalcedon, bearing an order to the second in command, directing him to kill Sarbar. The despatch fell into Sarbar's hands : he inserted after his name those of four hundred of the principal officers, who seeing their lives in danger, agreed with the proposition of their commander to conclude a separate peace with the Greeks. Deprived of his only army and his best general, Chosroes was unable to oppose resistance to a new attack of Heraclius upon the heart of Persia. He fled to the East, abandoning the West to the victorious Greeks ; but the loyalty of his subjects ceased with his victories, and Chosroes became the victim of a rebellion headed by his own son, Siroes, by whom he was put to death in the month of February, a. b. 628. In the following month of March a peace was concluded between Heraclius and Siroes, in consequence of which the ancient limits of the two empires were restored, and the holy cross was given back to the Christians. It was presented to the holy se- pulchre by Heraclius himself in a. d. 629. Pre- vious to this, however, the ejnperor celebrated his victories by a triumphal entrance into Constan- tinople : the blessings of his subjects followed him wherever he went, and his fame spread over the world from Europe to the remotest corners of India. Ambassadors from that country, from the Prankish king, Dagobert, and many other eastern and west- ern princes, came to Constantinople to congratulate the emperor on his having overthrown the here- ditary enemy of the Roman empire.

The glory acquired by Heraclius was of short duration. The provinces reconquered from the Persians he was deprived of for ever by the Arabs. Our space does not allow us to give more than a short sketch of the long and bloody war that gave a new leligion and a new master to the ;^st.

On his way to Jerusalem in A. D. 629, Heraclius received at Edessa an ambassador of Mohammed, who summoned the emperor to adopt the new religion. In spite of this insult the emperor con- descended to conclude a treaty of friendship with the prophet. A small town, however, on the frontier of Syria was plundered by some Arabs, and this trifling circumstance was the signal of a general war, which Mohammed feared all the less as the Greek empire was exhausted through the long wars with the Persians. The war was continued by Moham- med's successors, Abubekr and Omar ; and before Heraclius died, Syria, Palaestine, and Jerusalem, Mesopotamia and Egypt, were annexed to the dominion of the Khalifs. Heraclius did not com- mand his armies, as he had done with so much success against Chosroes, but spent his days in pleasures and theological controversies in his palace at Constantinople. The motives of his inactivity are unknown to us, and we are inclined to ascribe the misfortunes of the last ten years of his reign to bodily sufiferings and debility, the consequence of his numerous campaigns and of the many wounds which he had received in his daring exploits, rather than to some mental derangement, or to that sort of character which has been given him by modern historians, who represent him as possessing a mix- ture of energy and laziness of such an extraordinary description as to be hardly consistent with the organisation of the human mind. So long as there is no positive evidence of the most unequivocal character, no man, and still less a great man, ought to be declared either a madman or a fool. Heraclius died on the 11th of March (February), A. D. 641, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Heraclius, called Constantino III., whom he had by his first wife, Eudoxia : he left another son, Heracleonas, by his second wife, Martina. A colossal statue of Heraclius was shown at Barletto in Apulia so late as the end of the fifteenth cen- tury. (Theophan. p. 250, &c., ed. Paris ; Nicephor. p. 4, &c., ed. Paris ; Cedrenus, p. 407, ed. Paris ; Chrcmicon Alexandrinum ; Zonar. vol. ii. p. 82, &c,, ed. Paris ; Manasses, p. 75, &c. ; Glycas, pw 270, &c., ed. Paris.)

 HERA′CLIUS II. [CONSTANTINUS III.]

 HE′RACON ('UpaKuv), an officer in the service of Alexander, who, together with Cleander and Sitalces, succeeded to the command of the army in Media, which had previously been under the orders of Parmenion, when the latter was put to death by order of Alexander, b.c. 330. In common with many others of the Macedonian governors, he per- mitted himself many excesses during the absence of Alexander in the remote provinces of the East : among others he plundered a temple at Susa, noted for its wealth, on which charge he was put to death by Alexander after his return from India, B. c. 325. (Arrian, Anab. vi. 27. §§ 8, 12 ; Curt. X. 1.)

 HERA′GORAS ('Upaydpas), a Greek historian of uncertain date. A work of his, called MeyapiKci, is quoted by Eudocia (p. 440), and by the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (i. 211), who calls him Hesagoras.

 HERAS ("Upas), a physician of Cappadocia, who lived after Heracleides of Tarentum (Galen, De Compos. Medicam. sec. Gen. v. 6, vol. xiii. p. 812), and before Andromachus (Galen, De Com- pos. Medicam. sec. Loc. vi. 9, vol. xii. p. 989), and therefore probably in the first century b. c. He wrote some works on pharmacy, which are very frequently quoted by Galen, but of which nothing but a few fragments remain. Ilis prescriptions oia 