engines of Sapor or Nushirvan,
were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly
produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror.
To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea: and the ruin of
Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during
ten years. But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of
Phoenicia was populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred
barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The Imperial
navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the
Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had
been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun. [93] The Saracens
rode masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the
Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three
hundred years before the Christian aera, the memorable though fruitless
siege of Rhodes [94] by Demetrius had furnished that maritime republic
with the materials and the subject of a trophy. A gigantic statue
of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected at the
entrance of the harbor, a monument of the freedom and the arts of
Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the colossus of Rhodes was
overthrown by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments,
lay scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described
as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the
diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who
is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass
metal; an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred
colossal figures, [95] and the three thousand statues, which adorned the
prosperity of the city of the sun.

[Footnote 92: Al Wakidi had likewise written a history of the conquest
of Diarbekir, or Mesopotamia, (Ockley, at the end of the iid vol.,)
which our interpreters do not appear to have seen. The Chronicle of
Dionysius of Telmar, the Jacobite patriarch, records the taking of
Edessa A.D. 637, and of Dara A.D. 641, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom.
ii. p. 103;) and the attentive may glean some doubtful information from
the Chronography of Theophanes, (p. 285-287.) Most of the towns of
Mesopotamia yielded by surrender, (Abulpharag. p. 112.) * Note: It has
been published in Arabic by M. Ewald St. Martin, vol. xi p 248; but its
authenticity is doubted.--M