A.D. 846 40 THE DECLINE AND FALL cated ; and such was the docility of the rising generation that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised and clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbours of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis ; an hun- dred and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania were attacked and pillaged ; nor could the suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and Apostles. Had the Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West ; the Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa ; their emirs of Sicily aspired to independ- ence ; and the design of conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. ^'^^ Invasion of In the Sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awak- saracena. ens a solcmn and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tiber, and to approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the Christian world. The gates and ramparts were guarded by a trembling people ; but the tombs and temples of St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the suburbs of the Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their invisible sanctity had protected them against the Goths, the Vandals, and the Lombards ; but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the legend ; and their rapacious spirit was ap- proved and animated by the precepts of the Koi-an. The Christian idols were stripped of their costly ofi'erings ; a silver altar was torn away from the shrine of St. Peter ; and, if the bodies or the buildings were left entire, their deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather than the scruples, of the Saracens. ^'^'- In their course along the Appian way, they pil- laged Fundi and besieged Gayeta ; but they had tui'ned aside from the walls of Rome, and, by their divisions, the Capitol was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca. The same danger still impended on the heads of the Roman people ; and their domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African emir. They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign ; I'^i The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily are given in Abulfeda ( Annal. Moslem, p. 271-273) and in the first volume of Muratori's Scriptores Rerum Itali- carum. M. de Guignes (Hist, des Huns, torn. i. p. 363, 364) has added some im- portant facts. i^ [See the account in Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages (E. T. ), vol. 3, p. 87 sqi/. Gregorovius describes the wealth of St. Peter's treasures at this time. Gibbon omits to mention that Guy of Spoleto relieved Rome.]
