Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/239

 a similar sum, he demanded more, and, in default, ended by sacking and burning the town. At the same time he was convened by a bishop on the part of the Antiochians, who offered him a thousand pounds of gold (£40,000) to quit the country. To these terms he agreed, but when the bishop returned to Antioch to clinch the bargain, he found that legates had arrived from Constantinople, who issued a prohibition against the Syrians continuing to buy back the Emperor's cities from the Persian monarch. Having received an intimation, therefore, consonant to this decree, Chosroes marched with all speed against the city.

Antioch, with a previous history of eight centuries, was the great commercial emporium between the Far East and the West; and it is supposed that the term Ta-Thsin, which represents the Roman Empire in Chinese annals, is a travesty of the proper name of the overflowing Syrian mart, of which alone they had any practical cognizance. Under the Empire, its history is especially dignified by the names of Julian, Libanius, and Chrysostom. But it must have been shorn of much of its splendour by the disastrous earthquake of 526, an account of which has been given on a previous page.

The city was situated in a plain about two miles wide between the Orontes and Mount Casius. On the north the river, which flowed past the walls, afforded adequate protection, but on the south two spurs from the mountain projected to such an extent that part of the city was built on