utious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the governor, who
celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of his deliverance. From
thence, returning to his companions, he assaulted on the inside the
entrance of the castle. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate,
let down the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival
of Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured
their conquest. Youkinna, a formidable foe, became an active and useful
proselyte; and the general of the Saracens expressed his regard for the
most humble merit, by detaining the army at Aleppo till Dames was cured
of his honorable wounds. The capital of Syria was still covered by the
castle of Aazaz and the iron bridge of the Orontes. After the loss of
those important posts, and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies,
the luxury of Antioch trembled and obeyed. Her safety was ransomed with
three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the successors
of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government of the East, which had
been decorated by Caesar with the titles of free, and holy, and inviolate
was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a
provincial town.

In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war are clouded on
either hand by the disgrace and weakness of his more early and his later
days. When the successors of Mahomet unsheathed the sword of war and
religion, he was astonished at the boundless prospect of toil and
danger; his nature was indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of
the emperor be kindled to a second effort. The sense of shame, and the
importunities of the Syrians, prevented the hasty departure from the
scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of Damascus and
Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk, may be imputed in
some degree to the absence or misconduct of the sovereign. Instead of
defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved the church and state in a
metaphysical controversy for the unity of his will; and while Heraclius
crowned the offspring of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped
of the most valuable part of their inheritance. In the cathedral of
Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix,
he bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession
instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to resist
the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in