To the _east_ they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris: the long disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror.
To the _west_ the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea: and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during ten years.

But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of Phnicia was populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert.

The Imperial navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun.

The Saracens rode masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits.

Three hundred years before the Christian aera, the memorable though fruitless siege of Rhodes by Demetrius had furnished that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a trophy.