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 and the lawful heir of the
monarchy.

The first intelligence from the East which Heraclius received, was that
of the loss of Antioch; but the aged metropolis, so often overturned
by earthquakes, and pillaged by the enemy, could supply but a small
and languid stream of treasure and blood. The Persians were equally
successful, and more fortunate, in the sack of Caesarea, the capital of
Cappadocia; and as they advanced beyond the ramparts of the frontier,
the boundary of ancient war, they found a less obstinate resistance and
a more plentiful harvest. The pleasant vale of Damascus has been adorned
in every age with a royal city: her obscure felicity has hitherto
escaped the historian of the Roman empire: but Chosroes reposed his
troops in the paradise of Damascus before he ascended the hills of
Libanus, or invaded the cities of the Phnician coast. The conquest of
Jerusalem, which had been meditated by Nushirvan, was achieved by the
zeal and avarice of his grandson; the ruin of the proudest monument of
Christianity was vehemently urged by the intolerant spirit of the Magi;
and he could enlist for this holy warfare with an army of six-and-twenty
thousand Jews, whose furious bigotry might compensate, in some degree,
for the want of valor and discipline. After the reduction of Galilee,
and the region beyond the Jordan, whose resistance appears to have
delayed the fate of the capital, Jerusalem itself was taken by assault.
The sepulchre of Christ, and the stately churches of Helena and
Constantine, were consumed, or at least damaged, by the flames; the
devout offerings of three hundred years were rifled in one sacrilegious
day; the Patriarch Zachariah, and the _true cross_, were transported
into Persia; and the massacre of ninety thousand Christians is imputed
to the Jews and Arabs, who swelled the disorder of the Persian march.
The fugitives of Palestine were entertained at Alexandria by the charity
of John the Archbishop, who is distinguished among a crowd of saints
by the epithet of _almsgiver_: and the revenues of the church, with a
treasure of three hundred thousand pounds, were restored to the true
proprietors, the poor of every country and every denomination. But
Egypt itself, the only province which had been exempt, sin