to the faith of an enemy. The interview ended as it was
natural to expect. The emperor was made a prisoner, and his astonished
troops laid down their arms. [139] In such a moment of triumph, the
pride and policy of Sapor prompted him to fill the vacant throne with
a successor entirely dependent on his pleasure. Cyriades, an obscure
fugitive of Antioch, stained with every vice, was chosen to dishonor the
Roman purple; and the will of the Persian victor could not fail of being
ratified by the acclamations, however reluctant, of the captive army.
[140]

[Footnote 135: Hist. Aug. p. 191. As Macrianus was an enemy to the
Christians, they charged him with being a magician.]

[Footnote 136: Zosimus, l. i. p. 33.]

[Footnote 137: Hist. Aug. p. 174.]

[Footnote 138: Victor in Caesar. Eutropius, ix. 7.]

[Footnote 139: Zosimus, l. i. p. 33. Zonaras, l. xii. p. 630. Peter
Patricius, in the Excerpta Legat. p. 29.]

[Footnote 140: Hist. August. p. 185. The reign of Cyriades appears in
that collection prior to the death of Valerian; but I have preferred
a probable series of events to the doubtful chronology of a most
inaccurate writer]

The Imperial slave was eager to secure the favor of his master by an act
of treason to his native country. He conducted Sapor over the Euphrates,
and, by the way of Chalcis, to the metropolis of the East. So rapid were
the motions of the Persian cavalry, that, if we may credit a very
judicious historian, [141] the city of Antioch was surprised when the
idle multitude was fondly gazing on the amusements of the theatre. The
splendid buildings of Antioch, private as well as public, were either
pillaged or destroyed; and the numerous inhabitants were put to the
sword, or led away into captivity. [142] The tide of devastation was
stopped for a moment by the resolution of the high priest of Emesa.
Arrayed in his sacerdotal robes, he appeared at the head of a great body
of fanatic peasants, armed only with slings, and defended his god and
his property from the sacrilegious hands of the followers of Zoroaster.
[143] But the ruin of Tarsus, and of many other cities, furnishes a
melancholy proof that, except in this singular instance, the conquest of
Syria and Cilicia scarcely interrupted the progress of the Persian arms.
The advantages of the narrow passes of Mount Taurus were abandoned, in
which an invader, whose principal force consisted in his cavalry, would
have been engaged in a very unequal comba