oyed by the Persians; but as soon as the emperor
had discovered a ford, they hastily retired to defend the banks of the
Sarus, in Cilicia. That river, an impetuous torrent, was about three
hundred feet broad; the bridge was fortified with strong turrets; and
the banks were lined with Barbarian archers. After a bloody conflict,
which continued till the evening, the Romans prevailed in the assault;
and a Persian of gigantic size was slain and thrown into the Sarus
by the hand of the emperor himself. The enemies were dispersed and
dismayed; Heraclius pursued his march to Sebaste in Cappadocia; and at
the expiration of three years, the same coast of the Euxine applauded
his return from a long and victorious expedition.

Instead of skirmishing on the frontier, the two monarchs who disputed
the empire of the East aimed their desperate strokes at the heart of
their rival. The military force of Persia was wasted by the marches and
combats of twenty years, and many of the veterans, who had survived
the perils of the sword and the climate, were still detained in the
fortresses of Egypt and Syria. But the revenge and ambition of Chosroes
exhausted his kingdom; and the new levies of subjects, strangers, and
slaves, were divided into three formidable bodies. The first army of
fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the
_golden spears_, was destined to march against Heraclius; the second
was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of his brother
Theodore's; and the third was commanded to besiege Constantinople, and
to second the operations of the chagan, with whom the Persian king had
ratified a treaty of alliance and partition. Sarbar, the general of the
third army, penetrated through the provinces of Asia to the well-known
camp of Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred
and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he impatiently
waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the opposite side of the
Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June, thirty thousand Barbarians, the
vanguard of the Avars, forced the long wall, and drove into the capital
a promiscuous crowd of peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore
thousand of his native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of Gepidae,
Russians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the standard of
the chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations, but the whole
city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the s