ersia should encourage his master and his friend to
deliver and possess the provinces of Asia. It is still more probable,
that Chosroes should animate his troops by the assurance that the sword
which they dreaded the most would remain in its scabbard, or be drawn in
their favor. The hero could not depend on the faith of a tyrant; and
the tyrant was conscious how little he deserved the obedience of a hero.
Narses was removed from his military command; he reared an independent
standard at Hierapolis, in Syria: he was betrayed by fallacious
promises, and burnt alive in the market-place of Constantinople.
Deprived of the only chief whom they could fear or esteem, the bands
which he had led to victory were twice broken by the cavalry, trampled
by the elephants, and pierced by the arrows of the Barbarians; and a
great number of the captives were beheaded on the field of battle by
the sentence of the victor, who might justly condemn these seditious
mercenaries as the authors or accomplices of the death of Maurice. Under
the reign of Phocas, the fortifications of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and
Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed, by the
Persian monarch: he passed the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian cities,
Hierapolis, Chalcis, and Berrhaea or Aleppo, and soon encompassed the
walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The rapid tide of success
discloses the decay of the empire, the incapacity of Phocas, and the
disaffection of his subjects; and Chosroes provided a decent apology for
their submission or revolt, by an impostor, who attended his camp as the
son of Maurice [58] and the lawful heir of the monarchy.

[Footnote 55: Theophylact, l. viii. c. 15. The life of Maurice was
composed about the year 628 (l. viii. c. 13) by Theophylact Simocatta,
ex-praefect, a native of Egypt. Photius, who gives an ample extract of
the work, (cod. lxv. p. 81--100,) gently reproves the affectation and
allegory of the style. His preface is a dialogue between Philosophy and
History; they seat themselves under a plane-tree, and the latter touches
her lyre.]

[Footnote 56: Christianis nec pactum esse, nec fidem nec foedus .....
quod si ulla illis fides fuisset, regem suum non occidissent. Eutych.
Annales tom. ii. p. 211, vers. Pocock.]

[Footnote 57: We must now, for some ages, take our leave of contemporary
historians, and descend, if it be a descent, from the affectation of
rhetoric to the rude simplicity of chronicles and abri