iance; 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 ve