patrician Crispus, and the _royal_ images of the bride and bridegroom
were indiscreetly placed in the circus, by the side of the emperor. The
father must desire that his posterity should inherit the fruit of his
crimes, but the monarch was offended by this premature and popular
association: the tribunes of the green faction, who accused the
officious error of their sculptors, were condemned to instant death:
their lives were granted to the prayers of the people; but Crispus might
reasonably doubt, whether a jealous usurper could forget and pardon
his involuntary competition. The green faction was alienated by the
ingratitude of Phocas and the loss of their privileges; every province
of the empire was ripe for rebellion; and Heraclius, exarch of Africa,
persisted above two years in refusing all tribute and obedience to the
centurion who disgraced the throne of Constantinople. By the secret
emissaries of Crispus and the senate, the independent exarch was
solicited to save and to govern his country; but his ambition was
chilled by age, and he resigned the dangerous enterprise to his
son Heraclius, and to Nicetas, the son of Gregory, his friend and
lieutenant. The powers of Africa were armed by the two adventurous
youths; they agreed that the one should navigate the fleet from Carthage
to Constantinople, that the other should lead an army through Egypt and
Asia, and that the Imperial purple should be the reward of diligence and
success. A faint rumor of their undertaking was conveyed to the ears of
Phocas, and the wife and mother of the younger Heraclius were secured
as the hostages of his faith: but the treacherous heart of Crispus
extenuated the distant peril, the means of defence were neglected or
delayed, and the tyrant supinely slept till the African navy cast anchor
in the Hellespont. Their standard was joined at Abidus by the fugitives
and exiles who thirsted for revenge; the ships of Heraclius, whose lofty
masts were adorned with the holy symbols of religion, steered their
triumphant course through the Propontis; and Phocas beheld from the
windows of the palace his approaching and inevitable fate. The green
faction was tempted, by gifts and promises, to oppose a feeble and
fruitless resistance to the landing of the Africans: but the people, and
even the guards, were determined by the well-timed defection of Crispus;
and they tyrant was seized by a private enemy, who boldly invaded the
solitude of the palace. Stripped of the diadem and purple, clothed in a
vile habit, and loaded with chains, he was transported in a small boat
to the Imperial galley of Heraclius, who reproached him with the crimes
of his abominable reign. "Wilt thou govern better?" were the last words
of the despair of Phocas. After suffering each variety of insult and
torture, his head was severed from his body, the mangled trunk was cast
into the flames, and the same treatment was inflicted on the statues
of the vain usurper, and the seditious banner of the green faction. The
voice of the clergy, the senate, and the people, invited Heraclius to
ascend the throne which he had purified from guilt and ignominy; after
some graceful hesitation, he yielded to their entreaties. His coronation
was accompanied by that of his wife Eudoxia; and their posterity, till
the fourth generation, continued to reign over the empire of the East.
The voyage of Heraclius had been easy and prosperous; the tedious march
of Nicetas was not accomplished before the decision of the contest:
but he submitted without a murmur to the fortune of his friend, and
his laudable intentions were rewarded with an equestrian statue, and a
daughter of the emperor. It was more difficult to trust the fidelity of
Crispus, whose recent services were recompensed by the command of the
Cappadocian army. His arrogance soon provoked, and seemed to excuse,
the ingratitude of his new sovereign. In the presence of the senate, the
son-in-law of Phocas was condemned to embrace the monastic life; and the
sentence was justified by the weighty observation of Heraclius, that the
man who had betrayed his father could never be faithful to his friend.
Even after his death the republic was afflicted by the crimes of Phocas,
which armed with a pious cause the most formidable of her enemies.
According to the friendly and equal forms of the Byzantine and Persian
courts, he announced his exaltation to the throne; and his ambassador
Lilius, who had presented him with the heads of Maurice and his sons,
was the best qualified to describe the circumstances of the tragic
scene. However it might be varnished by fiction or sophistry, Chosroes
turned with horror from the assassin, imprisoned the pretended envoy,
disclaimed the usurper, and declared himself the avenger of his father
and benefactor. The sentiments of grief and resentment, which humanity
would feel, and honor would dictate, promoted on this occasion the
interest of the Persian king; and his interest was powerfully magnified
by the national and religious prejudices of the Magi and satraps. In a
strain of artful adulation, which assumed the language of freedom, they
presumed to censure the excess of his gratitude and friendship for the
Greeks; a nation with whom it was dangerous to conclude either peace or
alliance; whose superstition was devoid of truth and justice, and who
must be incapable of any virtue, since they could perpetrate the most
atrocious of crimes, the impious murder of their sovereign. For the
crime of an ambitious centurion, the nation which he oppressed was
chastised with the calamities of war; and the same calamities, at the
end of twenty years, were retaliated and redoubled on the heads of the
Persians. The general who had restored Chosroes to the throne still
commanded in the East; and the name of Narses was the formidable
sound with which the Assyrian mothers were accustomed to terrify their
infants. It is not improbable, that a native subject of Persia should
encourage his master and his friend to deliver and possess the provinces
of Asia. It is still more probable, that Chosroes should animate his
troops by the assurance that the sword which they dreaded the most would
remain in its scabbard, or be drawn in their favor. The hero could not
depend on the faith of a tyrant; and the tyrant was conscious how
little he deserved the obedience of a hero. Narses was removed from his
military command; he reared an independent standard at Hierapolis, in
Syria: he was betrayed by fallacious promises, and burnt alive in the
market-place of Constantinople. Deprived of the only chief whom they
could fear or esteem, the bands which he had led to victory were twice
broken by the cavalry, trampled by the elephants, and pierced by the
arrows of the Barbarians; and a great number of the captives were
beheaded on the field of battle by the sentence of the victor, who might
justly condemn these seditious mercenaries as the authors or accomplices
of the death of Maurice. Under the reign of Phocas, the fortifications
of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced,
and destroyed, by the Persian monarch: he passed the Euphrates, occupied
the Syrian cities, Hierapolis, Chalcis, and BerrhÊa or Aleppo, and soon
encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The rapid
tide of success discloses the decay of the empire, the incapacity of
Phocas, and the disaffection of his subjects; and Chosroes provided
a decent apology for their submission or revolt, by an impostor, who
attended his camp as the son of Maurice and the lawful heir of the
monarchy.
The first intelligence from the East which Heraclius received, 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 more fortunate, in the sack of CÊsarea, the capital of
Cappadocia; and as they advanced beyond the ramparts of the frontier,
the boundary of ancient war, they found a less obstinate resistance and
a more plentiful 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 Roman empire: but Chosroes reposed his
troops in the paradise of Damascus before he ascended the hills of
Libanus, or invaded the cities of the Phnician coast. The conquest 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 with an army of six-and-twenty
thousand Jews, whose furious bigotry might compensate, in some degree,
for the want of valor 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 flames; the
devout offerings of three hundred years were rifled in one sacrilegious
day; the Patriarch Zachariah, and the _true cross_, 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 a crowd of saints
by the epithet of _almsgiver_: and the revenues of the church, with a
treasure of three hundred thousand pounds, were restored to the true
proprietors, the poor of every country and every denomination. But
Egypt itself, the only province which had been exempt, since the time
of Diocletian, from foreign and domestic war, was again subdued by the
successors of Cyrus. Pelusium, the key of that impervious country, was
surprised by the cavalry of the Persians: they passed, with impunity,
the innumerable channels of the Delta, and explored the long valley
of the Nile, from the pyramids of Memphis to the confines of ∆thiopia.
Alexandria might have been relieved by a naval force, but the archbishop
and the prÊfect embarked for Cyprus; and Chosroes entered the second
city of the empire, which still preserved a wealthy remnant of industry
and commerce. His western trophy was erected, not on the walls of
Carthage, but in the neighborhood of Tripoli; the Greek colonies of
Cyrene were finally extirpated; and the conqueror, treading in the
footsteps of Alexander, returned in triumph through the sands of the
Libyan desert. In the same campaign, another army advanced from the
Euphrates to the Thracian Bosphorus; Chalcedon surrendered after a long
siege, and a Persian camp was maintained above ten years in the presence
of Constantinople. The sea-coast of Pontus, the city of Ancyra, and the
Isle of Rhodes, are enumerated among the last conquests of the great
king; and if Chosroes had possessed any maritime power, his boundless
ambition would have spread slavery and desolation over the provinces of
Europe.
From the long-disputed banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the reign of
the grandson of Nushirvan was suddenly extended to the Hellespont and
the Nile, the ancient limits of the Persian monarchy. But the provinces,
which had been fashioned by the habits of six hundred years to the
virtues and vices of the Roman government, supported with reluctance
the yoke of the Barbarians. The idea of a republic was kept alive by the
institutions, or at least by the writings, of the Greeks and Romans, and
the subjects of Heraclius had been educated to pronounce the words of
liberty and law. But it has always been the pride and policy of Oriental
princes to display the titles and attributes of their omnipotence; to
upbraid a nation of slaves with their true name and abject condition,
and to enforce, by cruel and insolent threats, the rigor of their
absolute commands. The Christians of the East were scandalized by the
worship of fire, and the impious doctrine of the two principles: the
Magi were not less intolerant than the bishops; and the martyrdom of
some native Persians, who had deserted the religion of Zoroaster, was
conceived to be the prelude of a fierce and general persecution. By the
oppressive laws of Justinian, the adversaries of the church were made
the enemies of the state; the alliance of the Jews, Nestorians, and
Jacobites, had contributed to the success of Chosroes, and his partial
favor to the sectaries provoked the hatred and fears of the Catholic
clergy. Conscious of their fear and hatred, the Persian conqueror
governed his new subjects with an iron sceptre; and, as if he suspected
the stability of his dominion, he exhausted their wealth by exorbitant
tributes and licentious rapine despoiled or demolished the temples of
the East; and transported to his hereditary realms the gold, the silver,
the precious marbles, the arts, and the artists of the Asiatic cities.
In the obscure picture of the calamities of the empire, it is not easy
to discern the figure of Chosroes himself, to separate his actions from
those of his lieutenants, or to ascertain his personal merit in the
general blaze of glory and magnificence. He enjoyed with ostentation the
fruits of victory, and frequently retired from the hardships of war to
the luxury of the palace. But in the space of twenty-four years, he was
deterred by superstition or resentment from approaching the gates of
Ctesiphon: and his favorite residence of Artemita, or Dastagerd,
was situate beyond the Tigris, about sixty miles to the north of the
capital. The adjacent pastures were covered with flocks and herds: the
paradise or park was replenished with pheasants, peacocks, ostriches,
roebucks, and wild boars, and the noble game of lions and tigers was
sometimes turned loose for the bolder pleasures of the chase. Nine
hundred and sixty elephants were maintained for the use or splendor of
the great king: his tents and baggage were carried into the field by
twelve thousand great camels and eight thousand of a smaller size; and
the royal stables were filled with six thousand mules and horses, among
whom the names of Shebdiz and Barid are renowned for their speed or
beauty. Six thousand guards successively mounted before the palace
gate; the service of the interior apartments was performed by twelve
thousand slaves, and in the number of three thousand virgins, the
fairest of Asia, some happy concubine might console her master for the
age or the indifference of Sira. The various treasures of gold, silver,
gems, silks, and aromatics, were deposited in a hundred subterraneous
vaults and the chamber _Badaverd_ denoted the accidental gift of the
winds which had wafted the spoils of Heraclius into one of the Syrian
harbors of his rival. The vice of flattery, and perhaps of fiction, is
not ashamed to compute the thirty thousand rich hangings that adorned
the walls; the forty thousand columns of silver, or more probably of
marble, and plated wood, that supported the roof; and the thousand
globes of gold suspended in the dome, to imitate the motions of the
planets and the constellations of the zodiac. While the Persian monarch
contemplated the wonders of his art and power, he received an epistle
from an obscure citizen of Mecca, inviting him to acknowledge Mahomet
as the apostle of God. He rejected the invitation, and tore the epistle.
"It is thus," exclaimed the Arabian prophet, "that God will tear the
kingdom, and reject the supplications of Chosroes." Placed on the verge
of the two great empires of the East, Mahomet observed with secret
joy the progress of their mutual destruction; and in the midst of the
Persian triumphs, he ventured to foretell, that before many years should
elapse, victory should again return to the banners of the Romans.
At the time when this prediction is said to have been delivered, no
prophecy could be more distant from its accomplishment, since the first
twelve years of Heraclius announced the approaching dissolution of the
empire. If the motives of Chosroes had been pure and honorable, he
must have ended the quarrel with the death of Phocas, and he would have
embraced, as his best ally, the fortunate African who had so generously
avenged the injuries of his benefactor Maurice. The prosecution of the
war revealed the true character of the Barbarian; and the suppliant
embassies of Heraclius to beseech his clemency, that he would spare the
innocent, accept a tribute, and give peace to the world, were rejected
with contemptuous silence or insolent menace. Syria, Egypt, and the
provinces of Asia, were subdued by the Persian arms, while Europe, from
the confines of Istria to the long wall of Thrace, was oppressed by the
Avars, unsatiated with the blood and rapine of the Italian war. They had
coolly massacred their male captives in the sacred field of Pannonia;
the women and children were reduced to servitude, and the noblest
virgins were abandoned to the promiscuous lust of the Barbarians. The
amorous matron who opened the gates of Friuli passed a short night in
the arms of her royal lover; the next evening, Romilda was condemned to
the embraces of twelve Avars, and the third day the Lombard princess was
impaled in the sight of the camp, while the chagan observed with a cruel
smile, that such a husband was the fit recompense of her lewdness and
perfidy. By these implacable enemies, Heraclius, on either side, was
insulted and besieged: and the Roman empire was reduced to the walls of
Constantinople, with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some
maritime cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast. After the
loss of Egypt, the capital was afflicted by famine and pestilence;
and the emperor, incapable of resistance, and hopeless of relief,
had resolved to transfer his person and government to the more secure
residence of Carthage. His ships were already laden with the treasures
of the palace; but his flight was arrested by the patriarch, who armed
the powers of religion in the defence of his country; led Heraclius to
the altar of St. Sophia, and extorted a solemn oath, that he would live
and die with the people whom God had intrusted to his care. The chagan
was encamped in the plains of Thrace; but he dissembled his perfidious
designs, and solicited an interview with the emperor near the town of
Heraclea. Their reconciliation was celebrated with equestrian games; the
senate and people, in their gayest apparel, resorted to the festival
of peace; and the Avars beheld, with envy and desire, the spectacle of
Roman luxury. On a sudden the hippodrome was encompassed by the
Scythian cavalry, who had pressed their secret and nocturnal march: the
tremendous sound of the chagan's whip gave the signal of the assault,
and Heraclius, wrapping his diadem round his arm, was saved with extreme
hazard, by the fleetness of his horse. So rapid was the pursuit, that
the Avars almost entered the golden gate of Constantinople with the
flying crowds: but the plunder of the suburbs rewarded their treason,
and they transported beyond the Danube two hundred and seventy thousand
captives. On the shore of Chalcedon, the emperor held a safer conference
with a more honorable foe, who, before Heraclius descended from his
galley, saluted with reverence and pity the majesty of the purple. The
friendly offer of Sain, the Persian general, to conduct an embassy to
the presence of the great king, was accepted with the warmest gratitude,
and the prayer for pardon and peace was humbly presented by the
PrÊtorian prÊfect, the prÊfect of the city, and one of the first
ecclesiastics of the patriarchal church. But the lieutenant of Chosroes
had fatally mistaken the intentions of his master. "It was not an
embassy," said the tyrant of Asia, "it was the person of Heraclius,
bound in chains, that he should have brought to the foot of my throne.
I will never give peace to the emperor of Rome, till he had abjured his
crucified God, and embraced the worship of the sun." Sain was flayed
alive, according to the inhuman practice of his country; and the
separate and rigorous confinement of the ambassadors violated the law of
nations, and the faith of an express stipulation. Yet the experience
of six years at length persuaded the Persian monarch to renounce the
conquest of Constantinople, and to specify the annual tribute or ransom
of the Roman empire; a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents
of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand
virgins. Heraclius subscribed these ignominious terms; but the time and
space which he obtained to collect such treasures from the poverty of
the East, was industriously employed in the preparations of a bold and
desperate attack.
Of the characters conspicuous in history, that of Heraclius is one of
the most extraordinary and inconsistent. In the first and last years of
a long reign, the emperor appears to be the slave of sloth, of pleasure,
or of superstition, the careless and impotent spectator of the public
calamities. But the languid mists of the morning and evening are
separated by the brightness of the meridian sun; the Arcadius of the
palace arose the CÊsar of the camp; and the honor of Rome and Heraclius
was gloriously retrieved by the exploits and trophies of six adventurous
campaigns. It was the duty of the Byzantine historians to have revealed
the causes of his slumber and vigilance. At this distance we can
only conjecture, that he was endowed with more personal courage than
political resolution; that he was detained by the charms, and perhaps
the arts, of his niece Martina, with whom, after the death of Eudocia,
he contracted an incestuous marriage; and that he yielded to the base
advice of the counsellors, who urged, as a fundamental law, that the
life of the emperor should never be exposed in the field. Perhaps he was
awakened by the last insolent demand of the Persian conqueror; but at
the moment when Heraclius assumed the spirit of a hero, the only hopes
of the Romans were drawn from the vicissitudes of fortune, which might
threaten the proud prosperity of Chosroes, and must be favorable to
those who had attained the lowest period of depression. To provide for
the expenses of war, was the first care of the emperor; and for the
purpose of collecting the tribute, he was allowed to solicit the
benevolence of the eastern provinces. But the revenue no longer flowed
in the usual channels; the credit of an arbitrary prince is annihilated
by his power; and the courage of Heraclius was first displayed in daring
to borrow the consecrated wealth of churches, under the solemn vow of
restoring, with usury, whatever he had been compelled to employ in the
service of religion and the empire. The clergy themselves appear to
have sympathized with the public distress; and the discreet patriarch of
Alexandria, without admitting the precedent of sacrilege, assisted
his sovereign by the miraculous or seasonable revelation of a secret
treasure. Of the soldiers who had conspired with Phocas, only two were
found to have survived the stroke of time and of the Barbarians; the
loss, even of these seditious veterans, was imperfectly supplied by the
new levies of Heraclius, and the gold of the sanctuary united, in the
same camp, the names, and arms, and languages of the East and West.
He would have been content with the neutrality of the Avars; and his
friendly entreaty, that the chagan would act, not as the enemy, but
as the guardian, of the empire, was accompanied with a more persuasive
donative of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. Two days after the
festival of Easter, the emperor, exchanging his purple for the simple
garb of a penitent and warrior, gave the signal of his departure. To the
faith of the people Heraclius recommended his children; the civil
and military powers were vested in the most deserving hands, and
the discretion of the patriarch and senate was authorized to save or
surrender the city, if they should be oppressed in his absence by the
superior forces of the enemy.