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had already diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the stern demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied, that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which he was unable to support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils, returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a Saracen to an orthodox master; and the numbers and spirit of the Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state.

Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia and the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and useful accession to the Roman empire. ^118

[Footnote 114: Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 278, 279. Liutprand was disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that Nicephorus led against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.]

[Footnote 115: Ducenta fere millia hominum numerabat urbs (Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 231) of Mopsuestia, or Masifa, Mampsysta, Mansista, Mamista, as it is corruptly, or perhaps more correctly, styled in the middle ages, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 580.) Yet I cannot credit this extreme populousness a few years after the testimony of the emperor Leo, (Tactica, c. xviii. in Meursii Oper. tom. vi. p. 817.)]

[Footnote 116: The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers. Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris; of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore, reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe praestans.]

[Footnote 117: Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam everteret .... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the true Ecbatana, (D'Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]

[Footnote 118: See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199 - l. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 649 - 684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the Ms. history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.)

Note: The whole original work of Leo the Deacon has been published by Hase, and is inserted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians. M Lassen has added to the Arabian authorities of this period some extracts from Kemaleddin's account of the treaty for the surrender of Aleppo. - M.]

Chapter LIII : Fate Of The Eastern Empire.

Part I.

Fate Of The Eastern