rated the lamentations of his friends. He had asserted, in familiar conversation, that the angel of death was not allowed to take his soul till he had respectfully asked the permission of the prophet; that permission was granted, and Mahomet immediately fell into the agony of dissolution: he reclined his head on the lap of A. D. Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker, and 632. the best beloved of his wives; and raising

his eyes towards the roof of the house, uttered these broken but articulate words :-" O God! pardon my sins-Yes, I come among my fellowcitizens on high:" and peaceably breathed his last on a carpet on the floor. He was interred on the same spot on which he expired; and the tomb of the prophet at Medina vies, in the opinion of the pilgrim, with the sanctity of the temple at Mecca.

Though Mahomet, from the indulgence of polygamy, might reasonably expect a numerous progeny, yet his hopes were disappointed. The four sons of Cadijah died in their infancy; and the eleven wives who succeeded to her bed, proved barren in his embraces. Ibrahim, the offspring of Mary, his Egyptian concubine, survived only fifteen months; and of the four daughters by Cadijah, the three eldest were married, and died before their father: but Fatima the fourth, who possesssed his love and confidence, became the wife of her cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny.

Heraclius was not deficient in courage and ability against the rising power of Mahomet; but he neither felt that enthusiasm, nor could communicate it to others, which his rival did; and seems to have remitted his attention to the

security

security of the empire, at a time when it was most required.

After the death of his first wife Eudocia, Heraclius had contracted an incestuous marriage with his niece Martina. The superstition of the Greeks beheld the judgment of Heaven in the diseases of the father, and the deformity of his offspring. Constantine, his eldest son, enjoyed the title of Augustus, but the weakness of his constitution requiring a colleague, Heracleonas, the son of Martina, was associated to the purple. Heraclius survived this arrangement only two years, and by his last will declared his two sons the equal heirs of the empire of the East.

A. D.

641.

The dying emperor, who at one period of his life was equal to the greatest generals of antiquity, having enjoined his sons, by his last public act, to honour Martina as their mother and sovereign, that ambitious woman immediately assumed the ensigns of royalty; but was speedily compelled to descend from the throne, by the unanimous decision of the people, who considered a woman as unfit to be trusted with the reins of government; and accordingly she found it expedient to retire to the female apartments of the palace. The death of Constantine, however, which happened in the thirtieth year of his age, and the first of his reign, not without the suspicion of poison, revived the aspiring hopes of Martina. She again resumed the management of the helm of state; but the incestuous relict of Heraclius was universally abhorred, and the exertions of her son, then only fifteen years of age, in her favour, were alike disregarded. Heraclius, it seems, suspecting some intrigues, on his

death

death-bed had dispatched a trusty servant,named Valentin, to arm the troops and provinces of the East, in defence of his two helpless children. This person performed the delegated trust with success; and from the camp of Chalcedon, he demanded the punishment of those who had poisoned Constantine, and insisted on the restoration of the lawful heir to the empire. On this the citizens of Constantinople compelled Heracleonas to appear in the pulpit of St. Sophia, with the eldest of the royal orphans. Constans alone being saluted as emperor, he was immediately crowned with the solemn benediction of the patriarch. His rival did not attempt to resist the voice of the people; but the senate, in concert with all ranks and degrees in the state, were determined to put an end to the intrigues of Martina and her son: they condemned the former to lose her tongue, and the latter his nose; and after this cruel amputation, they were permitted to linger out their days in exile and oblivion.

CHAP.

CHAP. XXVII.

From the Death of Heraclius to the first Crusade.

A. D. CONSTANS ascended the throne when

641.

years old;

only twelve and the early respect which he had shewn to the senate, was quickly erased by the prejudices of the age, and the habits of despotism. He viewed his brother Theodosius, whose virtues made him entirely beloved by the people, with jealous and malignant eyes; and causing him to be ordained a deacon, received the sacred chalice from his hands: yet even this disqualification for the purple could not allay the apprehensions of Ĉonstans, who soon after procured the unhappy youth to be put to death. But the imprecations of the people pursued the royal assassin; while his crime being succeeded by the most dreadful remorse, he perpetually imagined that he beheld his murdered brother extending him a cup of blood, to quench that thirst with which he was continually tormented. To fly from so terrifying an object, as well as to retire from the detestation of his people, he left Constantinople, and, after passing a winter at Athens, he sailed to Tarentum, visited Rome, and then fixed his principal residence at Syracuse. But his steps were attended by conscious guilt, and the visionary shade of Theodosius incessantly obtruded itself on his distempered view. Like another Cain, he wandered from place to place, without finding peace or

quiet in any; nor could his increasing wars against the Saracens and Lombards dispel the illusions of his fancy. But notwithstanding his sufferings from this cause, which it might have been supposed would have softened his heart, he governed the empire in the most tyrannical manner, and was equally detestable for his avarice as for his other crimes. The former he carried to such a pitch, as to rob the churches of their richest ornaments and their consecrated vessels.

Thus, odious to himself and to mankind, he perished in the capital of Sicily by domestic treason, in the twenty-seventh year of his reign. A servant who attended him in the bath, after pouring warm water on his head, struck him violently with the vase: he fell stunned by the blow, and was suffocated in the water. The troops in Sicily hastily invested with the purple an obscure youth, the elegance of whose form seems to have been his only recommendation.

Constans, however, having left three sons in the Byzantine court, the cause of Constantine the eldest was readily embraced by his subjects, who contributed with zeal and alacrity to chastise the presumption of a province which had usurped the legitimate rights of the senate and people. The emperor sailed from the Hellespont with a powerful fleet, and quickly defeating the upstart, caused his beauteous head to be exposed in the hippodrome.

Constantine returned in triumph to his capital, and the appearance of his beard having taken place during the Sicilian voyage, he obtained the familiar appellation of Pogonatus, by which he is distinguished in history from others of the

same name.

In