Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/97

OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 7:') Avars ; and the third day the Lombard princess was impaled in the sight of the camp, while the chagan observed, with a cruel smile, that such a husband was the fit recompense of her lewd- ness and perfidy. '^■ By these implacable enemies Heraclius, on either side, was insulted and besieged ; and the Roman empire was reduced to the walls of Constantinople, with the remnant of (h-eece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast. After the loss of fjgypt, the capital was afflicted by famine and pestilence; and [a.d. cis ?] the emperor, incapable of resistance and hopeless of relief, had resolved to transfer his person and government to the more secure residence of Carthage.'"'^ His ships were already laden with the treasures of the palace ; but his flight was arrested by the patriarch, who armed the powers of religion in the defence of his country, led Heraclius to the altar of St. Sophia, and ex- torted a solemn oath that he would live and die with the people whom God had entrusted to his care. The chagan was en- camped in the plains of Thrace, but he dissembled his perfidious designs, and solicited an interview with the emperor near the town of Heraclea. Their reconciliation was celebrated with [a.d cis] equestrian games, the senate and people in their gayest apparel resorted to the festival of peace, and the Avars beheld, with envy and desire, the spectacle of Roman luxury. On a sudden, the hippodrome was encompassed by the Scythian cavah'y, who had pressed their secret and nocturnal march ; the tremendous sound of the chagan's whip gave the signal of the assault ; and Heraclius, wrapping his diadem round his arm, was saved, with extreme hazard, by the fleetness of his horse. So rapid was the pursuit that the Avars almost entered the golden gate of Con- stantinople with the flying crowds ; ^" but the plunder of the '^Paul Warnefrid, de Gestis Langobardorum, 1. iv. c. 38, 42. Muratori, Annali d'ltalia, torn. v. p. 305, &c. ^[This design seems to have followed the failure of the embassy to Cliosroes.] ^'^The Paschal Chronicle, which sometimes introduces fragments of history into a barren list of names and dates, gives the best account of the tieason of the Avars, P- 3S9> 390 [p- 7i2.f(/(/. , ed. Bonn]. The number of captives is added by Nicephorus. [Theophanes places this attack of the Avars in A.D. 619 (a.m. 61 10), the date adopted by Petavius, Gibbon, Muralt, Clinton. Ijut Chron. Pasch. gives ..n. 623, and E. Gerland (Byz. Ztschr., 3, p. 334-7) has argued with much plausibility that this date is right and that the return of Heraclius in A.D. 623 (George Pis. Acroas. iii. 311) was due to this danger from the Avars. — It was on this occasion that the raiment of the Virgin was discovered in a coffin at Blachern ; and the discovery is related by a contemporary, Theodore Syncellus. The relation has been edited by Combefis (Hist. Haer. Monothel. , ii. 755 sqq.) and in an improved form by Ch. Loparev (Vizant. Vrem., ii. 592 sijq.), who however wrongly refers it to the Russian siege of the city in a.d. 860 ; see V. Vasilievski, ib. iii. 83 sqq.