and ten thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the rums [June 13, A.D. 827] of the ancient Selinus; but, after some partial victories, Syracuse[1] was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were relieved by a powerful[2] reinforcement of their brethren of Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was gradually reduced, and the commodious harbour of Palermo was chosen [A.D.831] for the seat of the naval and military power of the Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which had formerly [Siege of Syracuse. A.D. 877-8] resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They stood about twenty days against the battering-rams and catapultæ, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers ; and the place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of death or apostacy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may be read as the epitaph of his country.[3] [May 21, A.D. 878] From the Roman conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive isle of Ortygia, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were still pre- cious ; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of silver ; the entire spoil was computed at one million of pieces of gold (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling); [Capture of Taormina. A.D. 902, Aug 1.] and the captives must out-number the seventeen thousand Christians who were transported from the sack of "Tauromenium into African servitude. In Sicily the religion and language of the Greeks were eradi-
- ↑ The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede would adapt itself much better to this epoch than to the date (a.d. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit of modern knights and ancient republicans.
- ↑ [Hardly powerful ; the important help which led to the capture of Palermo came from Africa in a.d. 830. The invaders tried hard to take the fortress of Henna, but did not succeed till 859.]
- ↑ The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is transcribed and illustrated by Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719, ik.z.). Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 69, 70, p. 190-192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the demons. [The letter of Theodosius to his friend Leo on the capture of Syracuse is published in Hase's ed. of Leo Diaconus (Paris, 1819), p. 177 sqq. — It may be well to summarise the progress of the Saracen conquest of Sicily chronologically : Mazara captured 827 ; Mineo 828 ; Palermo 831 ; c. 840, Caltabellotta and other places ; 847 Leontini ; 848 Ragusa ; 853 Camarina ; 858 Gagliano and Cefalii ; 859 Henna ; 868-70 Malta ; 878 Syracase ; 902 Taorniina, Rametta, Catania.]
