The expedition of Heraclius.  The Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, one of the chief officers of the state, also received the shocking tidings with indignation.  He was determined that the imperial purple should not be usurped by an obscure centurion of disgusting aspect.  “The person of this Phocas was diminutive and deformed; the closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, were in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and discolored by a formidable scar.  Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even of arms, he indulged in an ample privilege of lust and drunkenness.”  At first Heraclius refused tribute and obedience to him; then, admonished by age and infirmities, he committed the dangerous enterprise of resistance to his son of the same name.  A prosperous voyage from Carthage soon brought the younger Heraclius in front of Constantinople.  The inconstant clergy, senate, and people of the city joined him, the usurper was seized in his palace and beheaded.

Invasion of Chosroes.  But the revolution that had taken place in Constantinople did not arrest the movements of the Persian king.  His Magian priests had warned him to act independently of the Greeks, whose superstition, they declared, was devoid of all truth and justice.  Chosroes, therefore, crossed the Euphrates; his army was received with transport by the Syrian sectaries, insurrections in his favor everywhere breaking out.  In succession, Antioch, Caesarea, Damascus fell; Jerusalem itself was taken by storm; the sepulchre of Christ, the churches of Constantine and of Helena were given to the flames; the Savior’s cross was sent as a trophy to Persia; the churches were rifled of their riches; the sacred relics, collected by superstition, were dispersed.  Egypt was invaded, conquered, and annexed to the Persian Empire; the Patriarch of Alexandria escaped by flight to Cyprus; the African coast to Tripoli was seized.  On the north, Asia Minor was subdued, and for ten years the Persian forces encamped on the shores of the Bosporus, in front of Constantinople.

In his extremity Heraclius begged for peace.  “I will never give peace to the Emperor of Rome,” replied the proud Persian, “till he has abjured his crucified God, and embraced the worship of the sun.”  After a long delay terms were, however, secured, and the Roman Empire was ransomed at the price of “a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins.”

But Heraclius submitted only for a moment.  He found means not only to restore his affairs but to retaliate on the Persian Empire.  The operations by which he achieved this result were worthy of the most brilliant days of Rome.

Invasion of Chosroes Though her military renown was thus recovered, though her territory was regained, there was something that the Roman Empire had irrecoverably lost.  Religious faith could never be restored.  In face of the world Magianism had insulted Christianity, by profaning her most sacred places—­Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary—­by burning the sepulchre of Christ, by rifling and destroying the churches, by scattering to the winds priceless relics, by carrying off, with shouts of laughter, the cross.