France and India: and the fame
of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules, [112] was eclipsed in the popular
estimation, by the superior merit and glory of the great Heraclius.
Yet the deliverer of the East was indigent and feeble. Of the Persian
spoils, the most valuable portion had been expended in the war,
distributed to the soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the
waves of the Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the
obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had borrowed
for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to satisfy these
inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted by the arms and
avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a second payment of the same
taxes; and the arrears of a simple citizen, the treasurer of Damascus,
were commuted to a fine of one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss
of two hundred thousand soldiers [113] who had fallen by the sword,
was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and
population, in this long and destructive war: and although a victorious
army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural
effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength.
While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure
town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they
cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief; an ordinary and
trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution.
These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valor had
emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his reign,
Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from
the Persians.

[Footnote 111: See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 628, No. 1-4,)
Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240--248,) Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 15.) The
seals of the case had never been broken; and this preservation of the
cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion of Queen Sira.]

[Footnote 1111: If the clergy imposed upon the kneeling and penitent
emperor the persecution of the Jews, it must be acknowledge that
provocation was not wanting; for how many of them had been eye-witnesses
of, perhaps sufferers in, the horrible atrocities committed on
the capture of the city! Yet we have no authentic account of great
severities exercised by Heraclius. The law of Hadrian was reenacted,
which prohibited the Jews from approaching within three mile