Deprived of his firmest support, and doubtful of the fidelity of his subjects, the greatness of Chosroes was still conspicuous in its ruins. The number of five hundred thou sand may be interpreted as an Oriental metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses and elephants, that covered Media and Assyria against the invasion of Heraclius. Yet the Romans boldly advanced from the Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected:* the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long since disappeared:† the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operations of the two armies. But these operations are neglected by the Byzantine historians, and, like the authors of epic poetry and romance, they ascribe the victory, not to the military conduct, but to the personal valour, of their favourite hero. On this memorable day, Heraclius, on his horse Phallus, surpassed the bravest of his warriors his lip was pierced with a spear, the steed was wounded in the thigh, but he carried his master safe and victorious through the triple phalanx of the barbarians. In the heat of the action, three valiant chiefs were successively slain by the sword and lance of the emperor; among these sians killed at Nineveh. The abatement of a cipher is scarcely enough to restore his sanity. *Ctesias (apud Diodor. Sicul. tom. i, 1. 2, p. 115, edit. Wesseling) assigns four hundred and eighty stadia (perhaps only thirty-two miles) for the circumference of Nineveh. Jonas talks of three days' journey; the one hundred and twenty thousand persons described by the prophet as incapable of discerning their right hand from their left, may afford about seven hundred thousand persons of all ages for the inhabitants of that ancient capital (Goguet, Origines des Loix, &c. tom. iii, part 1, p. 92, 93) which ceased to exist six hundred years before Christ. The western suburb still subsisted, and is mentioned under the name of Mosul, in the first age of the Arabian caliphs. + Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, &c. tom. ii, p. 286) passed over Nineveh without perceiving it. He mistook for a ridge of hills the old rampart of brick or earth. It is said to have been one hundred feet high, flanked with fifteen hundred towers, each of the height of two hundred feet. [Some of those mounds have now been explored by Mr. Layard, who has familiarized Nineveh and its remains to English readers. The arts and manners of Assyria may now be studied in the various monuments taken from the repose of ages and deposited in the British Museum.-ED.] was Rhazates himself; he fell like a soldier, but the sight of his head scattered grief and despair through the fainting ranks of the Persians. His armour of pure and massy gold, the shield of one hundred and twenty plates, the sword and belt, the saddle and cuirass, adorned the triumph of Heraclius; and if he had not been faithful to Christ and his mother, the champion of Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to the Jupiter of the Capitol. In the battle. of Nineveh, which was fiercely fought from day-break to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were taken from the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut in pieces, and the victors, concealing their own loss, passed the night on the field. They acknowledged, that on this occasion it was less difficult to kill than to discomfit the soldiers of Chosroes; amidst the bodies of their friends, no more than two bow-shot from the enemy, the remnant of the Persian cavalry stood firm till the seventh hour of the night; about the eighth hour they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their baggage, and dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than of resolution. The diligence of Heraclius was not less admirable in the use of victory; by a march of forty-eight miles in four-and-twenty hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the great and the lesser Zab; and the cities and palaces of Assyria were open for the first time to the Romans. By a just gradation of magnificent scenes, they penetrated to the royal seat of Dastagerd, and though much of the treasure had been removed, and much had been expended, the remaining wealth appears to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have satiated their avarice. Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred, military licence, and religious zeal, had not : * Rex regia arma fero (says Romulus, in the first consecration) . . . bina postea (continues Livy, 1, 10) inter tot bella, opima parta sunt spolia, adeo rara ejus fortuna decoris. If Varro (apud Pomp. Festum, p. 306, edit. Dacier) could justify his liberality in granting the opime spoils even to a common soldier who had slain the king or general of the enemy, the honour would have been much more cheap and common. wasted with equal rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject. The recovery of three hundred Roman standards, and the deliverance of the numerous captives of Edessa and Alexandria, reflect a purer glory on the arms of Heraclius. From the palace of Dastagerd, he pursued his march within a few miles of Modain or Ctesiphon, till he was stopped on the banks of the Arba, by the difficulty of the passage, the rigour of the season, and perhaps the fame of an impregnable capital. The return of the emperor is marked by the modern name of the city of Sherhzour; he fortunately passed Mount Zara before the snow, which fell incessantly thirty-four days; and the citi zens of Gandzaca, or Tauris, were compelled to entertain his soldiers and their horses with an hospitable reception.* When the ambition of Chosroes was reduced to the defence of his hereditary kingdom, the love of glory, or even the sense of shame, should have urged him to meet his rival in the field. In the battle of Nineveh, his courage might have taught the Persians to vanquish, or he might have fallen with honour by the lance of a Roman emperor. The successor of Cyrus chose rather, at a secure distance, to expect the event, to assemble the relics of the defeat, and to retire by measured steps before the march of Heraclius, till he beheld with a sigh the once-loved mansions of Dastagerd. Both his friends and enemies were persuaded that it was the intention of Chosroes to bury himself under the ruins of the city and palace: and as both might have been equally adverse to his flight, the monarch of Asia, with Sira, and three concubines, escaped through a hole in the wall nine days before the arrival of the Romans. The slow and stately procession in which he showed himself to the prostrate crowd, was changed to a rapid and secret journey; and the first evening he lodged in the cottage of a peasant, whose humble door would scarcely give admittance to the great king. His superstition was subdued * In describing this last expedition of Heraclius, the facts, the places, and the dates, of Theophanes (p. 265-271), are so accurate and authentic that he must have followed the original letters of the emperor, of which the Paschal Chronicle has preserved (p. 398–402) very curious specimen. The words of Theophanes are remarkable: εἰσῆλθε Χοσρόης εἰς οἰκον γεώργου μηδαμινού μεῖναι, οὐ χωρηθεὶς ἐν τῇ τούτου θύρα, ἣν ἰδὼν ἔσχατον Ηράκλειος by fear: on the third day, he entered with joy the fortifications of Ctesiphon; yet he still doubted of his safety till he had opposed the river Tigris to the ursuit of the Romans. The discovery of his flight agitated with terror and tumult the palace, the city, and the camp, of Dastagerd: the satraps hesitated whether they had most to fear from their sovereign or the enemy; and the females of the haram were astonished and pleased by the sight of mankind, till the jealous husband of three thousand wives again confined them to a more distant castle. At his command the army of Dastagerd retreated to a new camp: the front was covered by the Arba, and a line of two hundred elephants; the troops of the more distant provinces successively arrived, and the vilest domestics of the king and satraps were enrolled for the last defence of the throne. It was still in the power of Chosroes to obtain a reasonable peace; and he was repeatedly pressed by the messengers of Heraclius to spare the blood of his subjects, and to relieve a humane conqueror from the painful duty of carrying fire and sword. through the fairest countries of Asia. But the pride of the Persian had not yet sunk to the level of his fortune; he derived a momentary confidence from the retreat of the emperor; he wept with impotent rage over the ruins of his Assyrian palaces, and disregarded too long the rising murmurs of the nation, who complained that their lives and fortunes were sacrificed to the obstinacy of an old man. That unhappy old man was himself tortured with the sharpest pains both of mind and body; and, in the consciousness of his approaching end, he resolved to fix the tiara on the head of Merdaza, the most favoured of his sons. But the will of Chosroes was no longer revered, and Siroes, who gloried in the rank and merit of his mother Sira, had conspired with the malcontents to assert and anticipate the rights of primogeniture.* Twenty-two satraps, they styled themselves patriots, were tempted by the wealth and honours of a new reign; to the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of pay; to the Christians, the free exercise of their religion; to the cap ¿0aúμaoεv (p. 269). Young princes who discover a propensity to war should repeatedly transcribe and translate such salutary texts. *The authentic narrative of the fall of Chosroes is contained in the letter of Heraclius (Chron. Paschal. p. 398), and the history of VOL. V. tives, liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant peace and the reduction of taxes. It was determined by the conspirators that Siroes, with the ensigns of royalty, should appear in the camp; and if the enterprise should fail, his escape was contrived to the imperial court. But the new monarch was saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes (yet where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons were massacred before his face, and he was thrown into a dungeon, where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern Persians minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and famished, and tortured, by the command of an inhuman son, who so far surpassed the example of his father: but at the time of his death, what tongue would relate the story of the parricide? what eye could penetrate into the tower of darkness? According to the faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, he sank without hope into a still deeper abyss ;* and it will not be denied that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the life of Chosroes; his unna tural son enjoyed only eight months the fruit of his crimes. and in the space of four years the regal title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed with the sword or dagger the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence, of discord, and of blood; and the state of anarchy prevailed about eight years longer, till the factions were Theophanes (p. 271). * On the first rumour of the death of Chosroes, an Heracliad in two cantos was instantly published_at Constantinople by George of Pisidia (p. 97-105). A priest and a poet might very properly exult in the damnation of the public enemy (μTεOWV TY Tаprápw, v. 56); but such mean revenge is unworthy of a king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to find so much black superstition (θεομάχος Χοσρόης ἔπεσεν καὶ ἐπτωματίσθη εἰς τὰ καταχθόνια . . . . εἰς τὸ πῦρ τὸ ἀκατάσβεστον, &c.) in the letter of Heraclius; he almost applauds the parricide of Siroes as an act of piety and justice. [The close of this unfortunate monarch's career is differently related in Persia. There the story is, that Siroes, enamoured of his step-mother Shirene, caused his father to be put to death in the palace of Dastagerd, and then wooed the widow for his bride. Before she would consent, she stipulated for permission to view the dead body of her husband. This being granted, at the sight she stabbed herself and died by his side. (Porter's Travels, ii, 212.) -ED.] |