CALIPHS OP BAGDAD. 



vaded the imperial territories. Nicephorus was over- 

 thrown in Lycaonia, with the loss of 40,000 of his best 

 troops, having received three wounds in the action. 



In this campaign the Saracens ravaged the adja- 

 cent provinces, and took a considerable number of 

 the principal towns ; after which they compelled the 

 emperor to a treaty of peace, by which he engaged to 

 pay annually 300,000 dinars (138,750), and abstain 

 from hostile encroachments in future. On the faith 

 of this stipulation the caliph withdrew into Western 

 Irak ; but the distance of 500 miles, and the incle- 

 mency of the season, which set in with unusual se- 

 verity, encouraged Nicephorus to violate the truce 

 by assailing the Moslem dominions. The Com- 

 mander of the Faithful was not slow to punish the 

 aggression. In a rapid march during the depth of 

 winter, he passed the snows of Mount Taurus, and 

 landed a regular army of 135,000 men in the plains 

 of Phrygia. A large body of volunteers swelled this 

 huge armament to 300,000 persons. Like a host of 

 locusts they swept the surface of Asia Minor far 

 beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested the Poli- 

 tic Heraclea, now a paltry town, but then a flour- 

 ishing place, whose ships had conveyed home the in- 

 trepid Xenophon and his Ten Thousand; and whose 

 .walls, 1200 years afterwards, were capable of sus- 

 taining a month's siege against the combined forces 

 of the Arabs. The ruin was complete ; the city was 

 reduced to ashes; and, besides immense spoil, 16,000 

 captives enhanced the triumph of the conqueror. 



Several other towns met a similar fate. Cyprus 

 was attacked, and the inhabitants pillaged without 

 mercy; after which, the " Roman dog" was com- 

 pelled to retract his haughty defiance, and submit 



