rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the wandering inhabita its of Centumcellæ to his new foundation of Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore.89 By his liberality, a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children, was planted in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling city was restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were divided among the new settlers: their first efforts were assisted by a gift of horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to live and die under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the West and North who visited the threshold of the apostles had gradually formed the large and populous suburt of the Vatican, and their various habitations were distin. guished, in the language of the times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards and Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to sacrilegious insult: the design of enclosing it with walls and towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity would supply and the pious labor of four years was animated in every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable.90 The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was Beretti (Chorographia Italiæ Medii Evi, p. 106, 108) has illustrated Centumcellæ, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and the other places of the Roman duchy. The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman church. His Life of Leo IV. contains twenty-four pages, (p. 175-199, edit. Paris ;) and if a great part consist of superstitious trifles, we must blame or commend hi here who was much oftener in a church than in a camp. one of the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at Constantinople during the middle age. In offensive or defensive war, he marched in person five times against the Sar. acens, formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his losses and defeats. In the last of these expeditions he pene. trated into Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father Harun was attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that moment the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in favor of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial affection. These solicita tions determined the emperor to wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the youngest had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Geor gia, and Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,91 the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes: his cavalry might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling, or one hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high road of Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre, and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory, or fail with the least reproach. In the revenge of The same number was applied to the following circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eighth of the Abbassides; he reigned right years, eight months, and eight days; left eight scas, eight daugàters, sight thousand slaves eight millions of gold. : his injury, the caliph prepared to retaliate a smilar affront. The father of Theophilus was a native of Amorium 92 in Phrygia the original seat of the imperial house had been adorned with privileges and monuments; and, whatever might be the indifference of the people, Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of the sovereign and his court. The name of AMORIUM was inscribed on the shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again united under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to the vain resentment of the Barbarians. The emperor embraced the more generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the front of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely planted with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was not glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who had obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of the Turkish cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped and relaxed by the evening rain, very few of the Christians could have escaped with the emperor from the field of battle. They breathed at Dorylæum, at the distance of three days, and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons, forgave the common flight both of the prince and people. After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with conempt his prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the witnesses of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by a faithful gov ernor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate people; and the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow * Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers, and totally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis of the new Galatia (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p. 234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read Ammuria, nct Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer, (p. 236.) of Motassem was accomplished with unrelenting rigor: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction, he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the neighborhood of Bagdad, while the unfortunate 93 Theophilus implored the tardy and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks. Yet in the siege of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had per ished their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty housand Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives, who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prisoners: 94 but in the national and religious conflict of the two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite torture; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were fiayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil.95 To a point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of death? 96 93 In the East he was styled AvoTvxis, (Continuator Theophan. 1. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes cœlitus fuerat assecutus, (Annalist Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.) 94 Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of these singu lar transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day's journey westward of Tarsus, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends, they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty-two martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph's order. 95 Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil c. 61, p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity as pirates and renegadoes. "For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see the Continuator of Theophanes, (1. iii. p. 77-84,) Genesius, (1. iii. p. 24-84,1 With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassi jes the glory of his family and nation expired. When the Arabian conqueror had spread themselves over the East, and were mingled with the servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of the South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice; the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the North, of which valor is the hardy and spon. taneous production. Of the Turks 97 who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths, either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan faith. The Turk ish guards stood in arms round the throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve leagues above the city of Peace.98 His son Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph was cut into sever pieces by the same swords which he had recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's blood, Montasser was trium Cedrenus, (p. 528–532,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen, p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 191,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640.) 97 M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes stumbles, In the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, aias the Kao-tche, or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hor les, from China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Sananides, &c. (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131.) 95 He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into the fanci ful title of Sermén-rat, that which gives pleasure at first sight, (D'Her. belot, Bibliothèque Orientale p. 808. D'Anville, l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 97. 98.✨ |