Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/81

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 61 with g^ory, and laden with Oriental spoils, returned to Constanti- nople, and displayed, in his triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive princes returned to their capitals ; the subjects disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance ; the Moslems again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the saints and martyrs ; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a Saracen to an orthodox master ; and the numbers and spirit of the Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state. Of these extensive conquests, [cypnu r^ ^ Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia and the isle of Cyprus, was »«] alone restored, a permanent and useful accession to the Roman empire. ^*2 1*2 See the annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagfius, and Abulfeda, from A.H. 351 to A.H. 361 ; and the reigns ofXicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras (torn. ii. 1. xvi. p. 199 [c. 24], 1. xvii. 215 [c. 4]) and Cedrenus (Compend. p. 649-684 [ii. p. 351 s^f. ed. Bonn]). Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the Ms. history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire in a Latin version (Critica, torn. iii. p. 873, torn. iv. P- 37)- [For Leo the deacon and the Greek te.xt of his work, since published, see above, vol. 5, Appendix, p. 504.]