ndred miles, and the inclemency of the season, encouraged his
adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus was astonished by the bold
and rapid march of the commander of the faithful, who repassed, in the
depth of winter, the snows of Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and
war were exhausted; and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds
from a field of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects.
Yet the emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved
on victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers
received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above three
hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched under the black
standard of the Abbassides. They swept the surface of Asia Minor far
beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested the Pontic Heraclea, [77] once
a flourishing state, now a paltry town; at that time capable of
sustaining, in her antique walls, a month's siege against the forces of
the East. The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had
been conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue
of Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and the
lion's hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of desolation
by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of Cyprus, compelled the
emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty defiance. In the new treaty,
the ruins of Heraclea were left forever as a lesson and a trophy; and
the coin of the tribute was marked with the image and superscription
of Harun and his three sons. [78] Yet this plurality of lords might
contribute to remove the dishonor of the Roman name. After the death of
their father, the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord,
and the conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the
restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign science.

[Footnote 75: See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in the
Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431-433, under his proper title; and in the
relative articles to which M. D'Herbelot refers. That learned collector
has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental chronicles of their
instructive and amusing anecdotes.]

[Footnote 76: For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium, consult
D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24-27.) The Arabian Nights
represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in Bagdad. He respected
the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the vices of