tior inter ceteros inventus, utiliter est
honoratus."

[5] Al Makkari, ii. p. 30. He was even accused of entering into
treasonable correspondence with the Christians of Galicia; of
forming a project for the massacre of Moslems; of being himself
a Christian, etc.

On the whole it may be said that the Saracen conquest was accomplished
with wonderfully little bloodshed, and with few or none of those
atrocities which generally characterize the subjugation of a whole
people by men of an alien race and an alien creed. It cannot, however,
be denied that the only contemporary Christian chronicler is at variance
on this point with all the Arab accounts.

"Who," says Isidore of Beja, "can describe such horrors! If every limb
in my body became a tongue, even then would human nature fail in
depicting this wholesale ruin of Spain, all its countless and
immeasurable woes. But that the reader may hear in brief the whole story
of sorrow--not to speak of all the disastrous ills which in innumerable
ages past from Adam even till now in various states and regions of the
earth a cruel and foul foe has caused to a fair world--whatever Troy in
Homer's tale endured, whatever Jerusalem suffered that the prophets'
words might come to pass, whatever Babylon underwent that the Scripture
might be fulfilled--all this, and more, has Spain experienced--Spain
once full of delights, but now of misery, once so exalted in glory, but
now brought low in shame and dishonour."[1]

[1] Cp. also Isidore, sec 36. Dunham, ii. p. 121, note,
curiously remarks: "Both Isidore and Roderic may exaggerate,
but the exaggeration proves the fact."

This is evidently mere rhapsody, of the same character as the ravings
of the British monk Gildas, though far less justified as it seems by the
actual facts. Rodrigo of Toledo, following Isidore after an interval of
500 years, improves upon him by entering into details, which being in
many particulars demonstrably false, may in others be reasonably looked
upon with suspicion as exaggerated, if not entirely imaginary. His words
are: Children are dashed on the ground, young men beheaded, their
fathers fall in battle, the old men are massacred, the women reserved
for greater misfortune; every cathedral burnt or destroyed, the national
substance plundered, oaths and treaties uniformly broken.[1]

To appreciate the mildness and generosity of the Arabs, we need only
compare their conquest of Spai