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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 881 
splendid palace within the walls of which subsequently arose the modern city of 
Spalato. Nothing more interesting exists on the shores of the Mediterranean than 
this extraordinary edifice, perhaps the largest that ever arose at the bidding of a 
single man ; not only vast and beautiful, but marking one of the most important 
epochs in the history of architecture. 
Though now obstructed with a mass of narrow, tortuous streets, its salient 
features are distinctly visible. The great temple, probably the mausoleum of the 
founder, has become the cathedral, and after the Pantheon at Rome there is no 
finer specimen of a heathen temple turned into a Christian church. Strange it is 
that the tomb of him whose reign was marked by such unrelenting persecution of 
the Christians should have been accepted as the model of those baptisteries so 
commonly constructed in the following centuries. 
Of Diocletian’s Salona, one of the chief cities of the Roman world, but little 
now remains save traces of the long irregular wall ; recent excavations have brought 
to light much that is interesting, but all of the Christian epoch, such as a large 
basilica which had been used as a necropolis, and a baptistery, one of those copied 
from the temple of Spalato, on the Mosaic pavement of which can still be read the 
text, Stcut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum ita anima mea ad te Deus. 
The final partition of the Roman empire took place in 365; forty years later 
the barbarians of the North began to invade Italy and the South of Europe, and in 
429 Genseric, at the head of his Vandal hordes, crossed over into Africa from 
Andalusia, a province which still bears their name, devastating the country as far 
as the Cyrenaica. He subsequently annexed the Balearic Islands, Corsica, and 
Sardinia, he ravaged the coasts of Italy and Sicily, and even of Greece and Illyria ; 
but the most memorable of his exploits was the unresisted sack of Rome, whence 
he returned to Africa laden with treasure and bearing the Empress Eudoxia a 
captive in his train. 
The degenerate emperors of the West were powerless to avenge this insult, but 
Byzantium, though at this time sinking to decay, did make a futile attempt to 
attack the Vandal monarch in his African stronghold. It was not, however, till 
533, in the reign of Justinian, when the successors of Genseric had fallen into 
luxurious habits and had lost the rough valour of their ancestors, that Belisarius 
was able to break their power and take their last king a prisoner to Constantinople. 
The Vandal domination in Africa was destroyed, but that of the Byzantines was 
never thoroughly consolidated; it rested not on its own strength, but on the 
weakness of its enemies, and it was quite unable to cope with the next great wave 
of invasion which swept over the land, perhaps the most extraordinary event in 
the world’s history, save only the introduction of Christianity. 
In 647, twenty-seven years after the Hedjira of Mohammed, Abdulla ibn Saad 
started from Egypt for the conquest of Africa with an army of 40,000 men. 
The expedition had two determining causes—the hope of plunder and the desire 
to promulgate the religion of El Islam. The sands and scorching heat of the desert, 
which had nearly proved fatal to the army of Cato, were no bar to the hardy 
Arabians and their enduring camels. The march to Tripoli was a fatiguing one, 
but it was successfully accomplished; the invaders did not exhaust their force in a 
vain effort to reduce its fortifications, but swept on over the Syrtic desert and north 
to the province of Africa, where, near the splendid city of Suffetula, a great battle 
was fought between them and the army of the Exarch Gregorius, in which the 
Christians were signally defeated, their leader killed, and his daughter allotted to 
Ibn ez-Zobair, who had slain her father. 
Not only did the victorious Moslems overrun North Africa, but soon they had 
powerful fleets at sea which dominated the entire Mediterranean, and the emperors 
of the East had enough to do to protect their own capital. 
Egypt, Syria, Spain, Provence, and the islands of the Mediterranean successively 
fell to their arms, and until they were checked at the Pyrenees by Charles Martel * 
it seemed at one time as if the whole of Southern Europe would have been com- 
pelled to submit to the disciples of the new religion. Violent, implacable, and 
irresistible at the moment of conquest, the Arabs were not unjust or hard masters 
in countries which submitted to their conditions. Every endeavour was, of course, 
