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survived, he experienced every attention from the worthy object of his generosity.

A. D.

Success 578.

Tiberius governed with every kingly virtue. crowned the arms of his generals in the Persian war; but a fatal disease seized on the excellent monarch, and, in four years after the death of Justin, carried him off, amidst the tears of his people. He gave his daughter and his diadem to Maurice, a prince worthy to occupy his throne. But in a war against the Avars, a tribe of 582. Turkish race, Maurice refused to redeem the prisoners who had fallen into their hands. The army mutinied, and invested Phocas, a centurion, with the purple; and by his order Maurice and his children were murdered.

The vices and tyranny of Phocas disgraced the throne 602. which had been adorned by the virtues of his predecessors. Every province was ripe for insurrection. Heraclius, the exarch of Africa, refused tribute and obedience to the tyrannic centurion. Crispus, the son-inlaw of Phocas, who trembled for. his life, joined the senate in calling upon Heraclius to save the empire. The task was committed by Heraclius to his son of the same name. An African fleet appeared before Constantinople the tyrant was deserted, taken, and put to death.

The reign of Heraclius was a series of struggles 610. against foreign enemies. Chosroes (Khosroo), the Persian monarch, under pretext of avenging the death of Maurice, had made war on Phocas. The first intelligence Heraclius received was that of the capture of Antioch. Jerusalem was next taken by the victorious Persians; they poured into Egypt, and the Persian standard was carried as far as Tripoli. Another Persian army lay during ten years encamped on the Bosphorus, in view of Constantinople. The Avars occupied Thrace, and pressed the capital; and Heraclius narrowly escaped becoming the victim of their perfidy. A peace was at length granted by the Persian king, on the condition of a most enormous tribute. During the time allotted for the collection of it, Heraclius prepared for a

desperate struggle: he put forth the soul and energy of a hero, and in six glorious campaigns retrieved the honour of the empire; Assyria, and the regions beyond the Tigris, then beheld, for the first time, the victorious standards of Rome. Meanwhile the heroism of the emperor was caught by his people, and the Avars and their allies were driven with loss from before Constantinople. But while Heraclius and Chosroes were thus mutually exhausting their strength, a new enemy, who meditated the overthrow of both, was looking on with secret satisfaction; and in the heart of Arabia a storm was preparing to burst over both their empires.

Persia.

We have seen that the Parthians had recovered the greater part of the original dominions of the Persian kings from the descendants of Seleucus, and had long proved the most formidable enemies of them and of the Romans. Their empire had gradually declined; and Ardeshir, or Artaxerxes, a Persian, and an officer of reputation in the army of Artaban, the Parthian king, and who was, or gave himself out to be, a lineal descendant of the ancient Persian monarchs, through his valour and conduct succeeded in wresting the sceptre from the feeble grasp 226. of the Arsacides, and the empire again became Persian.

A. D.

The restoration of every thing to its original state in the glorious days of the ancient monarchs, was the first object of Ardeshir. The Mobeds or priests of the national religion were summoned from their retirement to consult on the re-establishment of the worship of Ormuzd in its original purity; for though the ancient religion had not undergone any persecution from the Arsacides, it had not been held in honour, and its ministers had languished in obscurity. But now, under a prince who regarded himself as the son of the Kaianides, the religious system, which had animated the soul and nerved the arm of that illustrious house, was again to flourish; the disciple of Zerdusht (Zoroaster)

again to combat beneath the banner of Ormuzd, against Ahriman and the powers of darkness; and the sacred fire to flame once more on a thousand altars.

By the side of religion stood military renown. Ardeshir put forth a claim to all the countries once contained in the Persian empire, and carried on heavy wars with the Romans for Anterior Asia, where, in Armenia, they still maintained on a throne the remnant of the Parthian royal family. Shahpoor (Sapores), the son of Ardeshir, continued the wars of his father, and extended his empire towards the west. The Roman emperor Valerian ended his days a captive in the hands of this monarch. Galerius, whom Diocletian raised to the dignity of Cæsar, forced the Persian king, Narses, to a peace, which lasted forty years, and gave Osrhoenè and Nisibis to the empire.

The Persian Yezdejird was the friend of the emperor Arcadius, and was suspected of Christianity by his orthodox subjects. Bahram, the succeeding king, was one of the best and greatest of the Sassanides. Feroze made war on the Nephthalites, or White Huns, whose A. D. king had been his friend and protector, and lost his life in 488. battle against them. His son, Cobad, waged war with the emperor Anastatius. His more illustrious son and successor, known in the West as Chosroes, in the East as Noosheerwan the Just, continued the wars of his father through the reign of Justinian; but in Belisarius he met an opponent such as the empire had never yet opposed to the generals of the Persian kings. The struggle was maintained throughout the life of Noosheerwan with mutual loss, and the final gain of neither. Hormuz, his 579. son, in despite of the careful education bestowed by his father, became a tyrant: the provinces rose in rebellion; the Roman arms advanced on one side, the Turkish Khan on another. A hero, Bahram, saved his country, and 590. usurped the throne. Hormuz died in prison; his son, Khosroo, fled to the protection of Maurice; the Roman arms and his faithful subjects restored him to the throne of his fathers: Bahram fled to the Turks, and there died by

poison. Khosroo, as we have just seen, took arms to A. D. avenge the murder of his protector Maurice, and carried 628. on a long and bloody war with Heraclius. Defeated

by the Romans, he was murdered by his son Siroes. The parricide enjoyed the fruit of his crimes but eight months. Twelve years longer the empire was agitated by anarchy and bloodshed, till the victorious arms of the Arabian khalifs ended the dominion of the house of Sassan in the person of Yezdejird III.

CHAP. II.

THE TIMES OF MOHAMMED AND THE FIRST KHALIFS.

Mohammed.

WHILE Chosroes of Persia was pursuing his dreams of recovering and enlarging the empire of Cyrus, and Heraclius was gallantly defending the empire of the Cæsars against him; while idolatry and metaphysics were diffusing their baleful influence through the church of Christ, and the simplicity and purity of the Gospel were nearly lost beneath the mythology, which occupied the place of that of ancient Greece and Rome, the seeds of a new empire, and of a new religion, were sown in the inaccessible deserts of Arabia.

569. At the time when the sceptre of Constantinople was

swayed by the pious nephew of Justinian, and that of Persia by the vigorous hand of Noosheerwan the Just, was born in the city of Mecca, in Arabia, Mohammed, the son of Abdallah, and grandson of Abd-ul-Motallib, one of the richest and most generous chiefs of the Koreish. Mohammed was early left an orphan; his uncles were numerous and powerful, and, in the division of his grandfather's property, his share was but five camels and a female slave. His uncle Aboo Taleeb reared him: at the age of twenty-five he entered the service of Khadijah, a rich widow of Mecca; and with her merchan

The

dise accompanied the caravans to Damascus.
honour and fidelity of the factor to his mistress was
exemplary; the person of Mohammed was handsome
and dignified, his aspect majestic, his eye penetrating,
his smile irresistible, his voice harmonious, and elo-
quence flowed from his tongue. Khadijah admired and
loved; the generosity of Aboo Taleeb made up the de-
ficiency of his nephew's fortune: she gave him her hand
and her wealth, and thus raised him to his proper rank
in society. The gratitude and affection of the son of
Abdallah caused the noble matron never to regret her act.

Mohammed was of a serious contemplative mind. He had long been convinced of the great truth of the unity of the Deity, and he mourned over the idolatry of his countrymen. In the solitude of a cavern near Mecca, whither he used to retire for meditation, he reflected on the best mode of bringing them to an acknowledgment of the truth. Arabian tradition spake of ancient prophets sent to reclaim men from error; Moses and Jesus were, he knew, commissioned from heaven to teach; he may have expected a similar commission; his enthusiasm may have beguiled his imagination, and in ecstatic vision the angel Gabriel possibly may have appeared to descend to him but it is far more probable that he conceived that the end justified the means; that the arguments of reason, which he had, perhaps, already tried, would have no effect on the obtuse minds of the adorers of 360 idols; that only as the envoy of heaven could he look for attention, and that his first vision of Gabriel was as fictitious as his latter ones notoriously were.

A. D.

In the 40th year of his age, Mohammed announced 609. to his wife Khadijah, his slave Zeid, his pupil Ali, and his friend Aboo Beker, a direct commission from God to preach the doctrine of his Unity. They may have believed, they may have seen the distant prospects of temporal power and glory that awaited them; they acknowledged the prophet. During the next three years, ten of the principal citizens of Mecca embraced the new faith. In the fourth year, he offered the bless

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