orthy of
his station, or of the impending danger. He issued a peremptory mandate,
that all persons who were not provided with the means of subsistence for
a three years' siege should evacuate the city: the public granaries
and arsenals were abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and
strengthened; and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or fire,
were stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of war, of
which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is safer,
as well as more honorable, than to repel, an attack; and a design was
meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning the naval
stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that had been hewn in Mount
Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore of Phnicia, for the service
of the Egyptian fleet. This generous enterprise was defeated by the
cowardice or treachery of the troops, who, in the new language of the
empire, were styled of the _Obsequian Theme_. They murdered their chief,
deserted their standard in the Isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves over
the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by investing with
the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The name of Theodosius might
recommend him to the senate and people; but, after some months, he sunk
into a cloister, and resigned, to the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian,
the urgent defence of the capital and empire. The most formidable of the
Saracens, Moslemah, the brother of the caliph, was advancing at the head
of one hundred and twenty thousand Arabs and Persians, the greater
part mounted on horses or camels; and the successful sieges of Tyana,
Amorium, and Pergamus, were of sufficient duration to exercise their
skill and to elevate their hopes. At the well-known passage of Abydus,
on the Hellespont, the Mahometan arms were transported, for the first
time, from Asia to Europe. From thence, wheeling round the Thracian
cities of the Propontis, Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land
side, surrounded his camp with a ditch and rampart, prepared and planted
his engines of assault, and declared, by words and actions, a patient
resolution of expecting the return of seed-time and harvest, should
the obstinacy of the besieged prove equal to his own. The Greeks would
gladly have ransomed their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment
of a piece of gold on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the
liberal offer was rejected with disdain, and the presum