Henry, as he rode with the patriarch back to Dover, listened with his strange habitual forbearance while Heraclius poured forth angry reproaches for the iniquities of his whole life, and declared at last that he had almost with his own hands slain St. Thomas.

Heraclius pointed scornfully to the train of followers.

"No wonder," was the parting taunt of Heraclius; "from the devil they came, and to the devil they will go.

In the year 617 A.D. Persian warriors advanced to the walls of Constantinople, and drove the Emperor Heraclius to despair.

... On the right of the choir, near a handsome marble piscina, is the effigy of a bishop, usually shown as that of Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, by whom the church was consecrated, but he left England in a fury, after Henry II.

The reign of the emperor Heraclius is perhaps more crowded with events of the highest consequence, than that of any other prince in the series.

"But Heraclius had a much more formidable enemy to encounter in the latter part of his reign, than the effeminate and divided Persian.

'The Greeks in their turn determined to dispute the command of the sea,' with the result that in the middle of the tenth century their empire was far more secure from its enemies than under the first successors of Heraclius.

The first embassy to Heraclius was sent in this year summoning him to follow the religion of God's Prophet and to acknowledge his supremacy.

At the same time the Prophet sent a like missive to the Ghassanide prince Harith, ally of Heraclius and a great soldier.

The envoys were treated with the contempt inevitable before so strange a request from an unknown fanatic, and Heraclius dismissed the whole matter as the idle word of a barbarian dreamer.

Heraclius refused; the embassy was not worthy of his notice, and he was certainly determined not to lose good fighting men in a useless journey through the desert.

The catastrophe was a signal for a massed attack upon Mahomet's power from the whole of the border district, led by the feudatories of Heraclius, who were bent upon exterminating the upstart.

Secure as was his control over Central and Southern Arabia, the northern feudatories backed by Heraclius were still obdurate and even openly hostile.

When Mahomet heard that the feudatories were massed under the bidding of Heraclius at Hims, he realised there was no time to be lost.

Central Arabia was an unknown country, inhabited by marauding tribes in a constant state of political flux; while Hira, the kingdom to the east of the desert on the banks of the Euphrates, had become a satrapy of Persia early in the century in which Mahomet lived, and Heraclius by frequent inroads had reduced the kingdom of Palmyra to impotence.

[Illustration: Fig. 357.Expulsion of the Jews in the Reign of the Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 135): "How Heraclius turned the Jews out of Jerusalem.

The columns were of precious marbles, stripped from Pagan palaces and temples; and the roof was tiled with plates of gilded bronze, torn in the age of Heraclius from the shrine of Venus and of Roma on the Sacred Way.

Thus the emperor Heraclius in the war against the Persians, being at a loss whether to advance or retreat, commanded a public fast for three days, at the end of which he applied to the four Gospels, and opened upon a text which he regarded as an oracular intimation to winter in Albania.

Perhaps you are descended from King Heraclius; or perhaps you are the wife of a prince! SALOME.

That this repute should continue, after the sweeping victories of Semites and subsequent centuries of Ottoman retreat before other heirs of Rome, is a paradox to be explained only by the fact that a large part of the population of the Near East remains at this day in about the same stage of civilization and knowledge as in the time of, say, Heraclius.

But fourteen years later, after several victories over the Persians, the Greek emperor, Heraclius, retook Jerusalem, and re-entered Constantinople in triumph with the coffer containing the sacred relic.

As military conquerors in the name of the Virgin, the Emperor Heraclius, and Narses, the general against the Arians. 7. A group of three female figures, representing the three famous saintly princesses who in marriage preserved their virginity, Pulcheria, Edeltruda (our famous queen Ethelreda), and Cunegunda.

The manuscripts are in the most barbarous monkish Latin, and are much such works as our booksellers publish of receipts for mixing colours, varnishes, &c. One of the authors, who calls himself Theophilus, was a monk; the other, Heraclius, is totally unknown; but the proofs are unquestionable.

HERACLIUS, Emperor of the East from 610 to 642, born in Cappadocia; raised to the throne of the East on account of the services he rendered the citizens of Constantinople in getting rid of a tyrant; waged war against the hostile Persians, defeated Chosroës, and compelled a peace, but was unable to withstand the arms of the Moslem invaders.