Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/423

OF THE EOMAN EMPIEE 401 the prophet. In the sloth and vanity of the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes of the house of Ommiyah were alike destitute of the qualifications of statesmen and of saints.^ Yet the spoils of unknown nations were continually laid at the foot of their throne, and the uniform ascent of the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit of the nation rather than the abilities of their chiefs. A large deduction must be allowed for the weakness of their enemies. The birth of Mahomet was fortunately placed in the most degenerate and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and the barbarians of Europe : the empires of Trajan, or even of Constantine or Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have been obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia. In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the Their con- aim of the senate to confine their counsels and legions to a single '^^^' war, and completely to sujipress a first enemy before they pro- voked the hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of policy were disdained by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the Arabian caliphs. With the same vigour and success they invaded the successors of Augustus and those of Artaxerxes ; and the rival monarchies at the same instant became the prey of an enemy whom they had been so long accustomed to despise. In the ten years of the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified four- teen hundred moschs for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet. One hundred years after his flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign of his successors extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the various and distant provinces, which may be com- prised under the names of I. Persia ; II. Syria ; III. Egypt ; IV. Africa ; and V. Spain. Under this general division, I shall pro- ceed to unfold these memorable transactions ; dispatching, with brevity, the remote and less interesting conquests of the East, and reserving a fuller narrative for those domestic countries which had been included within the pale of the Roman Empire. Yet I must excuse my own defects by a just complaint of the blind- ness and insufficiency of my guides. The Greeks, so loquacious in controversy, have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs 9 Their reigns in Eutychius, torn. ii. p. 360-395; Elmacin, p. 59-108; Abul- pharagius, Dynast, ix. p. 124-139 ; Abulteda, p. 111-141 ; D'Herbelot, Biblio- theque Orientale, p. 691, and the particular article of the Ommiades. [It must be remembered that the writers from whom our accounts of the Omayyads come wrote in the interest of their supplanters, the Abbasids. Cp. Appendix!.] VOL. V. 26