Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/474

452 THE DECLINE AND FALL Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The intelli- gence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted the de- clining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a dropsy about seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria.^"^ Under the minority of his grandson, the clamours of a people, deprived of their daily sustenance, compelled the Byzantine court to under- take the recovery of the capital of Egypt. In the space of four years, the harbour and fortifications of Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet and army of Romans. They were twice expelled by the valour of Amrou, who was recalled by the domestic peril from the distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But the facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the obstinacy of the resistance, provoked him to swear that, if a third time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as accessible on all sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his promise, he dismantled several parts of the walls and towers, but the people was spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosch of Mercy was erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of his troops. The Alex- I should dcccivc the expectation of the reader, if I passed in ubrary silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the sur- name of PhUopomis from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy. 1"^^ Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philo- ponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, con- temptible in that of the barbarians : the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated 134 Notwithstanding some inconsistencies of Theophanes and Cedrenus, the accuracy of Pagi (Critica, torn. ii. p. 824) has extracted from Nicephorus and the Chronicon Orientale the true date of the death of Heraclius, February nth, A.D. 641, fifty days after the loss of Alexandria. A fourth of that time was sufficient to convey the intelligence. [Alexandria fell nine months after his death (App. 21).] 135 Many treatises of this lover of labour {(f,i,TTovo<;) are still extant; but for readers of the present age the printed and unpublished are nearly in the same predicament. Moses and Aristotle are the chief objects of his verbose commentaries, one of which is dated as early as May loth, A.D. 617 (Fabric. Bibliot. Grasc. tom. ix. p. 458-468). A modern (John Le Clerc), who sometimes assumed the same name, was equal to old Philoponus in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real knowledge. [The story founders on the chronology. John Philoponus lived in the early part of the sixth century. Cp. Krumbacher, Gesch. der byz. Litteratur, p. 581.]