6 THE DECLINE AND FALL quickened by a more active and martial spirit. In the revolu- tions of the Greek empire, after the tyrant Justinian had been punished and avenged, an humble secretary, Anastasius or Arte- mius. was prompted by chance or merit to the vacant purple. He ivas alarmed by the sound of war : and his ambassador re- turned from Damascus with the tremendous news that the Sara- cens were preparing an armament by sea and land, such as would transcend the experience of the past, or the belief of the present, age. The precautions of Anastasius were not uiaworthy of his station or of the impending danger. He issued a peremptorv mandate that all persons who were not provided with the means of subsistence for a three years' siege should evacuate the city ; the public granaries and arsenals were abundantly replenished ; the walls were restored and strengthened ; and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or fire, were stationed along the ram- parts, or in the brigantines of war. of which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is safer, as well as more honourable, than to repel an attack ; and a design was meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that had been hewn in mount Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore of Phoenicia, for the service of the Egyptian fleet. This generous enterprise was de- feated by the cowardice or treachen" of the troops who. in the new lan<;uage of the empire, were styled of the Ohyeqiiiau Thnne.^'- They murdered their chief, deserted their standard in the isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves over the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by investing with the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The name of Theodosius might recommend him to the senate and people : but, after some months, he sunk into a cloister, and resigned, to the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian. the urgent defence of the capital and empire. P***"""*! The most formidable of the Saracens, Moslemah the brother of the caliph, was advancing at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand Arabs and Persians, the greater part mounted on horses ^' In the dhnsion of the Themes, or provinces described by Constanline Porphy- rogenitus (de Themalibus, 1. i. p. 9, 10 [p. 24-26, ed. Bonn]), the Otsequiiim , a Latin appellation of the army and palace, was the fourth in the public ordo-. Nice was the metropolis, and its i»irisdiction extended from the Hellespont o-er the adjacent parts of Bithvnia and Phrygia (see the two maps prefixed by Delisle to the Impcriuni OHentale of Banduri). [Gibbon omits to mention the most re- markable incident in this episode. The Opsician troopts proceeded to Constanti- nople and besieged Anastasius. The fieet and the engines, which had been pre- pared by the Empieror to defend the city against the Saracens, had to be used against the rebels. When Theodosius ultimately effected his entry, the Opsicians pillaged the city. For the Themes see Appendix 3.]
