steal within the fortified lines. Luckily, at the right moment, the dogs barked; the Byzantines awoke and were at their posts, and drove back the enemy into his mines. It is said that Heaven specially favoured them, and that a sudden radiance in the form of a crescent streamed across the sky, and showed them all things clearly. The light may have been that of the Aurora Borealis. So striking was the incident that in after times it was thought worthy of being commemorated on the coins of the city, and the crescent represented on them has been supposed (though the idea probably cannot be sustained) to have suggested their famous symbol to the Turks. The Byzantines were as pertinacious in defence as their enemy was in attack, and when his engines shattered their walls and towers, they repaired the breaches with the tombstones from their burial-places. Their ships, too won a decisive victory over his fleet in the Bosporus. Well indeed did they fight, we may say for Greece as well as for themselves, against the might of Macedon.
But it is a question whether they could have successfully prolonged the struggle. There was every reason why the Greeks should come to the rescue of Byzantium, but we know how slow they were to unite even when their common safety seemed imperatively to demand it. On this great occasion the chief islands of the Ægean saw their interest and acted accordingly. A fleet from Rhodes and Cos and Chios was soon in the waters of the Bosporus. Athens, too, though she had little reason to be pleased with the Byzantines, who had deserted her confederacy and contributed mainly to its overthrow,
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