is clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes; the songs of triumph
were modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls were besprinkled with
holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under
the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and
the new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable.
[90]

[Footnote 88: De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364.
Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, sous la Domination
des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot reconcile, the
difference of these writers in the succession of the Aglabites.]

[Footnote 89: Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106, 108)
has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and the other
places of the Roman duchy.]

[Footnote 90: The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent concerning the
invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin chronicles do not afford
much instruction, (see the Annals of Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic
and contemporary guide for the popes of the ixth century is Anastasius,
librarian of the Roman church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four
pages, (p. 175-199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of
superstitious trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was much
oftener in a church than in a camp.]

The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of the
most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at Constantinople
during the middle age. In offensive or defensive war, he marched in
person five times against the Saracens, formidable in his attack,
esteemed by the enemy in his losses and defeats. In the last of these
expeditions he penetrated into Syria, and besieged the obscure town of
Sozopetra; the casual birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father
Harun was attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and
concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that moment the
arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in favor of a place for
which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial affection. These
solicitations determined the emperor to wound his pride in so sensible a
part. Sozopetra was levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were
marked or mutilated with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female
captives were forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a
matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name
of Motasse