Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/96

84. When he first entered the desert to seek retirement, he met some hungry Arabs, who were reduced almost to starvation, and he gave them freely what he had to satisfy their wants; from that hour his cell was always furnished with abundance by the grateful Scenites, and in contemplating their officious kindness, he wept over the ingratitude of his fellow-creatures towards the Giver of all things. His name afforded protection to the numerous eremites who had established themselves in the wilderness, and in the midst of continual scenes of bloodshed and rapine, the pious and defenceless inhabitant of the solitary cave was suffered to live uninjured and unmolested.

Soon after the accession of Justinian, owing to a quarrel with the governor of Palestine, Diomedes Silentiarius, the Arabian phylarch or king, Hareth, retired into the desert, where he was suddenly attacked, defeated, and slain by the king of the Persian Arabs, who had, during the reign of Justin, been in continual hostilities with the Romans. To revenge his death, by order of the emperor, the successor of Hareth, who also bore his name, and was