terms. After a conference with the Imperial representative, the bishop of the town, he had escorted him back with honour to the principal gate — then sent a party of men rushing forward with a baulk of timber to block the gateway. Before the people of Sura could remove the baulk a squadron of Persian cavalry had swept in and down the main street. Sura was sacked and burned to the ground; its inhabitants enslaved and taken away to Persia.
Our commander in Syria was the same Boutzes who had fought on the left wing at Daras. His headquarters were at Hierapolis, another six days' march up the river. On hearing of Khosrou's approach, Boutzes exhorted the citizens and soldiers to a resolute defence of the city — then, collecting his light cavalry, took to flight with the utmost speed. Khosrou marched against Hicrapolis. Finding that the fortifications were strong, he agreed not to press the siege if he were given a ransom of 100,000 pieces of gold. The citizens, alarmed by the fate of Sura, paid the money. After this, Khosrou turned westward and came to Beroca, where he found the fortifications more vulnerable than those of Hicrapolis and therefore fixed the ransom-money at 200,000 pieces of gold. Here, too, the citizens consented, but when they came to collect the money they found that they could only raise one-half of it; the Imperial tax-gatherersespecially my mistress's son Photius, who had become one of Justinian's most heartlessly efficient agents-had been busy in this country of late. Fearful of Khosrou's anger, therefore, the principal citizens and the soldiers of the garrison deserted the walls of Beroca and fled for safety to the citadel. Khosrou stormed the deserted walls and, furious at being trifled with, as he had burned half the city down. However, upon finding that the money had not been paid simply because there was none, he forgave the debt and continued his march towards Antioch.
Justinian, when the news of the invasion reached him, had immediately sent his nephew Germanus — the one who had helped to put down the mutiny in Africa — to inspect the defences of Antioch. These were in good enough repair, but had one vulnerable point: a large broad rock, Orocasias, which stood close up against the walls at the highest point of the circuit. Just as Hadrian's mausoleum had been a standing threat to the walls of Rome until it had been incorporated in them as an outwork, so with this rock Orocasias. Germanus decided that it must be fortified at once. The only alternative was to cut a broad, deep fosse to separate the wall from the rock (which stood only fifteen feet below the level of the battlements), and to raise the height of the wall. But the civic authorities of Antioch refused to do anything in the matter. They said that there was no time to complete any building or trenching before Khosrou arrived, and that to be interrupted in the work would be to reveal gratuitously the one weak part of the defences. If they found themselves unable to defend the city, they would try to buy Khosrou off; in fact, the Patriarch Ephraim wrote secretly to Khosrou, offering to collect any reasonable sum in ransom — he suggested 100,000 in gold. But Justinian now sent a circular letter to all governors of cities, forbidding them to pay ransom money under penalty of death. The Patriarch, afraid to face Khosrou empty-handed, fled northward into Cilicia, as a number of other rich citizens prudendy did. Six thousand cavalry now arrived from the Lebanon to reinforce the garrison; their commanders closed the gates, so that flight became impossible.
King Khosrou's advance-guard soon appeared within sight of Antioch. His ambassador came under the walls and declared the Persian demands — they exactly corresponded with the Patriarch's offer. For 100,000 he would spare the city and pass on with his army.
The inhabitants of Antioch are a very disorderly, unserious sort of people. They treated the ambassador with no sort of respect — pelting him with filth and shooting arrows all about him. If Belisarius with only 5,000 trained men, they argued, could hold a much bigger city for a whole year against 150,000 Goths, why should not they with 9,000 hold Antioch against Khosrou's army of 50,000 Persians? Moreover, Belisarius had been given little help by the unwarlike Roman civilians, whereas in Antioch the Blues and Greens had formed a sort of local militia; their faction- fights, which were conducted in a more open and courageous fashion than at Constantinople, had given them soldierly enthusiasm. So it happened, after all, that 10,000 volunteers swelled the regular forces, and one-half of these at least wore chain-armour and carried weapons. Unfortunately, the rock Orocasias itself was not defended. It is my opinion that if 300 good men had climbed outside the fortifications and stationed themselves on its steep crest they could have warded off any attack. But a different plan was adopted: long wooden stages were slung from ropes between the towers at this point, so that the defenders could fight from two tiers with arrows and javelins from the staging above, with swords and spears from the battlements below.
On the morning following the refusal of his peace-terms King Khosrou sent part of his army down into the valley of the Orontes, to make assaults at various points of the city wall there while he went up the hill with a picked force against Orocasias. Those wooden stages were the undoing of Antioch. As the archers and javelin-men stationed on them were working hard to make the Persians keep their distance, with reinforcements continually rushing down from the towers to them, suddenly the ropes gave way — and planks and soldiers fell with a tremendous crash on top of the crowded parapet beneath. Hundreds were cither killed or gravely injured; and horrible cries went up, which the Persians answered with yells of triumph.
The men in the adjoining towers, not knowing what had happened, imagined that the wall itself had collapsed and that the Persians were forcing an entrance. They deserted their posts and rushed downhill into the city; arrived at the gate which leads to the suburb of Daphne, they shouted that they had seen Boutzes in the distance coming to their relief with an army and must hurry out to join forces with him. Nobody believed this story, but there was an immediate rush of civilians to quit Antioch while a chance still offered, the Daphne gate being the only one against which the Persians were making no attack. Then the whole cavalry force withdrew from the fortifications and converged at a gallop on this single gate, riding down the civilians and clambering out over a barrier of dead and dying. Soon Antioch was deserted of all troops except a few regular infantry and the city militia. The militia-men who had survived the collapse of the staging abandoned the Orocasias wall as soon as they realized that their flanks were no longer protected by the regulars. They drew up at the bottom of the hill, resolved to defend the streets. The Persians scaled the walls with ladders and entered without difficulty.
The militia-men then gave a brisk display of street-fighting in the approved Hippodrome tradition, with cobblestones and rapiers and bludgeons. The Blues attacked with their war-cry 'Down with the Greens!' and the Greens with their war-cry 'Down with the Blues!', and the Persians were forced to give ground against them. But King Khosrou, posted in a captured tower, observed that this was only a rabble army, and sent a squadron of his Immortals charging up the street. The militia broke, and a massacre began in which immense numbers of people of both sexes perished. Antioch was sacked, and in the Cathedral Khosrou found extraordinary stores of gold and silver, enough to pay for the whole campaign twice over. As a punishment for the street-fighting, he ordered the whole city to be burned down, with the exception of the Cathedral — for he said that he had no quarrel with the Patriarch. Even the suburbs were destroyed, more thoroughly even than by the earthquake of thirteen years previously. Half a million people were left homeless and starving. He assembled 100,000 of the younger and more active sort and comforted them thus: 'I shall bring you back safely with me to my own country and build you a new city on the banks of the Euphrates, which is a finer river by far than your Orontes. You shall have baths and market-places and a public library and a hippodrome — everything that you could possibly desire!'
Then he marched to Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and bathed in the sea, in fulfilment of a vow that he had made to the Sun God; and then up the Orontes to Apamea, where he again enriched himself with church treasures. There the people opened their gates to him, so he did not burn the city, and even allowed them to keep their most priceless possession — a half-yard of wood sawn from the base of the True Cross. Age and rottenness had made this relic phosphorescent, so that it shone in the dark, which was held miraculous. The priests kept it in a golden chest studded with jewels. But Khosrou took the chest.
It was at Apamea that he ordered a chariot-race in his own honour. 'Mark you,' he said,'the Green Colour must be given the precedence, since the Emperor Justinian and his Empress have, my ministers inform me, too long shown an unjust bias in favour of the Blue.' In Persia chariots are used only in parades and ceremonial processions; Khosrou therefore did not realize that the sport was competitive. The four chariots were released from the 'prisons', the charioteers strove with cry and blow for the lead, and the First Blue soon gained the inner berth: he shot fifty paces ahead of the Second Blue, with the two Greens a long way behind. Khosrou grew very angry and, seeing in the Blue chariots an emblem of the Emperor, he cried out: 'Stop the race, stop that Caesar! He has impertinently stolen the lead from my two chariots.' Persian soldiers rushed out into the arena and formed a barrier with lances. The Blue charioteers pulled up, for fear of impaling their horses, and the Green chariots were allowed to take the lead and win. This was the foullcst race ever seen in a hippodrome (and I could tell you of some pretty foul ones). The audience laughed uproariously, and Khosrou beamed at them, not realizing that the joke was against himself. 'Stop that Caesar' became a catchword in racing circles all over the world. Khosrou was of a naturally irritable and sarcastic temper. For example, he would ridicule the misfortunes of the people whose cities he destroyed by
