CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS. 323 



Repeated messages of defeat and disaster in- 

 formed Heraclius, then at Antioch, of the success 

 of the insolent barbarians. To arrest their pro- 

 gress, and drive the robbers of the desert for ever 

 from his dominions, an army of 80,000 men vpas 

 collected from the provinces of Europe and Asia. 

 CiEsarea, Tyre, Sidon, Joppa, Tripoli, and other 

 coast-towns vrere strongly garrisoned. The main 

 body was intrusted to Manuel, one of the bravest 

 officers in the service. He was reinforced by 

 20,000 Christian Arabs, with Jabalah, king of Gas- 

 sah, at their head. This prince had embraced Islam 

 in the presence of Mohammed ; but afterward, 

 having quarrelled with a person in the Temple at 

 Mecca, he had abandoned the Koran, fled to He- 

 raclius, and, in a letter from Omar to the Syrian 

 army, he was publicly denounced an apostate. The 

 banner of the Gassanites was planted in the van ; 

 for it was a maxim of the Greek general "to cut 

 diamond Avith diamond ;" in other words, to oppose 

 the fury of the barbarians with the valour of their 

 own countrymen. 



Manuel took immediate possession of Emesa, 

 prematurely evacuated by the Moslems, and ad- 

 vanced to the banks of the Yermouk, where Khaled 

 had taken his position, and where he resolved to 

 stake the fate of Syria. This petty stream (the 

 Hieromax of the Greeks), immortalized by one of 

 the most sanguinary battles of antiquity, rises in 

 Mount Hermon, and winding through the plain of 

 Decapolis, is lost, after a short run, in the Lake of 

 Tiberias. The tardy policy of the Grecian general 

 lost him the only chance he ever had of driving the 

 invaders back to their deserts. Instead of attacking 

 them before the arrival of 8000 auxiliaries from Me- 

 dina, he wasted the time in useless overtures for 

 peace, and allowed the enemy to gain some advan- 

 tage by routing one of his detachments on their 

 march. An order from the emperor, proposing to 



