Richard F. Burton - "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1"

Robert W. Chambers - "The Fighting Chance"

Raymond King Cummings - "Wandl the Invader"

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS - "The Deluge"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5




[Footnote 59: The most elegant commentary on the Categories or
Predicaments of Aristotle may be found in the Philosophical
Arrangements of Mr. James Harris, (London, 1775, in octavo,) who
labored to revive the studies of Grecian literature and
philosophy.]

[Footnote 60: Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 81, 222. Bibliot. Arab.
Hisp. tom. i. p. 370, 371. In quem (says the primate of the
Jacobites) si immiserit selector, oceanum hoc in genere
(algebrae) inveniet. The time of Diophantus of Alexandria is
unknown; but his six books are still extant, and have been
illustrated by the Greek Planudes and the Frenchman Meziriac,
(Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. iv. p. 12 - 15.)]

[Footnote 61: Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 210, 211, vers. Reiske)
describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan, and the best
historians. This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal
or Hashemite cubits which Arabia had derived from the sacred and
legal practice both of Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is
repeated 400 times in each basis of the great pyramid, and seems
to indicate the primitive and universal measures of the East.
See the Metrologie of the laborions. M. Paucton, p. 101 - 195.]

[Footnote 62: See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the
preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma
Dissertationum, Oxon. 1767.]

[Footnote 63: The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar,
and the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most
certain predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter
and the sun, (Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161 - 163.) For the state
and science of the Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en
Perse, tom. iii. p. 162 - 203.)]

[Footnote 64: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The
original relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless,
practitioner.]

[Footnote 65: In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was
cured by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom.
i. p. 318.)]

[Footnote 66: The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the
Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and
judgment by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii.
p. 932 - 940) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii.
p. 119 - 127.)]

[Footnote 67: See a good view of the progress of anatomy in
Wotton, (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208 -
256.) His reputation has been unworthily depreciated by the wits
in the controversy of Boyle and Bentley.]

[Footnote 68: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al
Beithar, of Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into
Africa, Persia, and India.]

[Footnote 69: Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17,
&c.) allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes
the modest confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century,
(D'Herbelot, p. 387,) that he had drawn most of his science,
perhaps the transmutation of metals, from the ancient sages.
Whatever might be the origin or extent of their knowledge, the
arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to have been known in Egypt
at least three hundred years before Mahomet, (Wotton's
Reflections, p. 121 - 133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens et
les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376 - 429.)

Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p.
336) rejects the claim of the Arabians as inventors of the
science of chemistry. "The formation and realization of the
notions of analysis and affinity were important steps in chemical
science; which, as I shall hereafter endeavor to show it remained
for the chemists of Europe to make at a much later period." - M.]

But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal
benefits of a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the
knowledge of antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of
thought. Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the
Arabians disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek
interpreters were chosen among their Christian subjects; they
formed their translations, sometimes on the original text, more
frequently perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of
astronomers and physicians, there is no example of a poet, an
orator, or even an historian, being taught to speak the language
of the Saracens. ^70 The mythology of Homer would have provoked
the abhorrence of those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy
ignorance the colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of
Carthage and Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in
oblivion; and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced
to a short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the
Persian kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may
have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am
not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of
whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have
much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to
learn; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions
of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just
delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative
and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry. ^71
The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous
complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the
blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious
freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually
unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal
spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian
sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their
prophet an impostor. ^72 The instinct of superstition was alarmed
by the introduction even of the abstract sciences; and the more
rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious
curiosity of Almamon. ^73 To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision
of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe
the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the
sword of the Saracens became less formidable when their youth was
drawn away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the
faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity
of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly
imparted the sacred fire to the Barbarians of the East. ^74

[Footnote 70: Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 26, 148) mentions a
Syriac version of Homer's two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian
Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or
Edessa towards the end of the viiith century. His work would be a
literary curiosity. I have read somewhere, but I do not believe,
that Plutarch's Lives were translated into Turkish for the use of
Mahomet the Second.]

[Footnote 71: I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William
Jones's Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in
octavo,) which was composed in the youth of that wonderful
linguist. At present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment,
he would perhaps abate of the fervent, and even partial, praise
which he has bestowed on the Orientals.]

[Footnote 72: Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been
accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians,
and the Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle's Dictionary.) Each
of these sects would agree, that in two instances out of three,
his contempt was reasonable.]

[Footnote 73: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque, Orientale, p. 546.]

[Footnote 74: Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the
emperor refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of
the caliph Almamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in
the same words by the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post
Theophanem, p. 118.)]

In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the
Greeks had stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and
enlarging their limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by
Mohadi, the third caliph of the new dynasty, who seized, in his
turn, the favorable opportunity, while a woman and a child, Irene
and Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of
ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris
to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of Harun, ^75 or
Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His
encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of
her troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of
their sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace;
and the exchange of some royal gifts could not disguise the
annual tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was
imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens had too rashly
advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land: their
retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and
plentiful markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper, that
their weary forces might be surrounded and destroyed in their
necessary passage between a slippery mountain and the River
Sangarius. Five years after this expedition, Harun ascended the
throne of his father and his elder brother; the most powerful and
vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious in the West, as the
ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most childish readers,
as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title to the
name of Al Rashid (the Just) is sullied by the extirpation of the
generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen
to the complaint of a poor widow who had been pillaged by his
troops, and who dared, in a passage of the Koran, to threaten the
inattentive despot with the judgment of God and posterity. His
court was adorned with luxury and science; but, in a reign of
three-and-twenty years, Harun repeatedly visited his provinces
from Chorasan to Egypt; nine times he performed the pilgrimage of
Mecca; eight times he invaded the territories of the Romans; and
as often as they declined the payment of the tribute, they were
taught to feel that a month of depredation was more costly than a
year of submission. But when the unnatural mother of Constantine
was deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus, resolved to
obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle of
the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the
game of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece.
"The queen (he spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and
herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female submitted to pay a
tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from the
Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits of your injustice, or
abide the determination of the sword." At these words the
ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his
cimeter, samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he
cut asunder the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the
edge, or endangering the temper, of his blade. He then dictated
an epistle of tremendous brevity: "In the name of the most
merciful God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to
Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of
an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold,
my reply." It was written in characters of blood and fire on the
plains of Phrygia; and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could
only be checked by the arts of deceit and the show of repentance.

The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the
campaign, to his favorite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: ^76
but the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the
season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus
was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander of
the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of
Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted;
and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field
of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet
the emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was
resolved on victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand
regular soldiers received pay, and were inscribed in the military
roll; and above three hundred thousand persons of every
denomination marched under the black standard of the Abbassides.
They swept the surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra,
and invested the Pontic Heraclea, ^77 once a flourishing state,
now a paltry town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her
antique walls, a month's siege against the forces of the East.
The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been
conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue
of Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and
the lion's hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of
desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of
Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty
defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left
forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was
marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three
sons. ^78 Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove
the dishonor of the Roman name. After the death of their father,
the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the
conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the
restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign
science.

[Footnote 75: See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in
the Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431 - 433, under his proper title;
and in the relative articles to which M. D'Herbelot refers. That
learned collector has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental
chronicles of their instructive and amusing anecdotes.]

[Footnote 76: For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium,
consult D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24 - 27.) The
Arabian Nights represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in
Bagdad. He respected the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the
vices of the inhabitants had driven him from the city, (Abulfed.
Annal. p. 167.)]

[Footnote 77: M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from
Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or
Eregri. His eye surveyed the present state, his reading
collected the antiquities, of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom.
iii. lettre xvi. p. 23 - 35.) We have a separate history of
Heraclea in the fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by
Photius.]

[Footnote 78: The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman
empire are related by Theophanes, (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407,
408.) Zonaras, (tom. iii. l. xv. p. 115, 124,) Cedrenus, (p. 477,
478,) Eutycaius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 407,) Elmacin, (Hist.
Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 147, 151,)
and Abulfeda, (p. 156, 166 - 168.)]



Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.

Part IV.

Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the
Stammerer at Constantinople, the islands of Crete ^79 and Sicily
were subdued by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is
disdained by their own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of
Jupiter and Minos, but it has not been overlooked by the
Byzantine historians, who now begin to cast a clearer light on
the affairs of their own times. ^80 A band of Andalusian
volunteers, discontented with the climate or government of Spain,
explored the adventures of the sea; but as they sailed in no more
than ten or twenty galleys, their warfare must be branded with
the name of piracy. As the subjects and sectaries of the white
party, they might lawfully invade the dominions of the black
caliphs. A rebellious faction introduced them into Alexandria;
^81 they cut in pieces both friends and foes, pillaged the
churches and the moschs, sold above six thousand Christian
captives, and maintained their station in the capital of Egypt,
till they were oppressed by the forces and the presence of
Almamon himself. From the mouth of the Nile to the Hellespont,
the islands and sea-coasts both of the Greeks and Moslems were
exposed to their depredations; they saw, they envied, they tasted
the fertility of Crete, and soon returned with forty galleys to a
more serious attack. The Andalusians wandered over the land
fearless and unmolested; but when they descended with their
plunder to the sea-shore, their vessels were in flames, and their
chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of the mischief.
Their clamors accused his madness or treachery. "Of what do you
complain?" replied the crafty emir. "I have brought you to a
land flowing with milk and honey. Here is your true country;
repose from your toils, and forget the barren place of your
nativity." "And our wives and children?" "Your beauteous captives
will supply the place of your wives, and in their embraces you
will soon become the fathers of a new progeny." The first
habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart, in the Bay
of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable
position in the eastern parts; and the name of Candax, their
fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole island, under
the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The hundred cities
of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only
one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance
of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The Saracens of
Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the timbers of
Mount Ida were launched into the main. During a hostile period
of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes of
Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with fruitless
curses and ineffectual arms.

[Footnote 79: The authors from whom I have learned the most of
the ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations,
&c., c. 3 - 20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom.
i. lettre ii. et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom.
iii. p. 343 - 544.) Although Crete is styled by Homer, by
Dionysius, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass,
or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.]

[Footnote 80: The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence
is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of
Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil, the
Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1 - 162, a Francisc.
Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily is related,
l. ii. p. 46 - 52. To these we may add the secondary evidence of
Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,
(Compend. p. 506 - 508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud
Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern
Greeks are such notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a
plurality of names.]

[Footnote 81: Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251 - 256, 268
- 270) had described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in
Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of
Crete.]

The loss of Sicily ^82 was occasioned by an act of
superstitious rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from
her cloister, was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of
his tongue. Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the
Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a
fleet of one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse
and ten thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the ruins of
the ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse
^83 was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before
her walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity
of feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they
were relieved by a powerful reenforcement of their brethren of
Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was
gradually reduced, and the commodious harbor of Palermo was
chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the
Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which
she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal
siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which
had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They
stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and
catapultoe, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the
place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial
fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a
church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop
and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast
into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of
death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint
may be read as the epitaph of his country. ^84 From the Roman
conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the
primitive Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the
relics were still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed
five thousand pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at
one million of pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand
pounds sterling,) and the captives must outnumber the seventeen
thousand Christians, who were transported from the sack of
Tauromenium into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and
language of the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility
of the rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were
circumcised and clothed on the same day with the son of the
Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbors of
Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of
Calabria and Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the
suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and
apostles. Had the Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen
an easy and glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But
the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the
Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their
emirs of Sicily aspired to independence; and the design of
conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of predatory
inroads. ^85

[Footnote 82: Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51. This history of the loss
of Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom.
vii. p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the
Italian chronicles.]

[Footnote 83: The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede
would adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date
(A.D. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently
reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit
of modern knights and ancient republicans.]

[Footnote 84: The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is
transcribed and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719,
&c.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p.
190 - 192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the
demons.]

[Footnote 85: The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily
are given in Abulfeda, (Annal' Moslem. p. 271 - 273,) and in the
first volume of Muratori's Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de
Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some
important facts.]

In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome
awakens a solemn and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens
from the African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber,
and to approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was
revered as the metropolis of the Christian world. The gates and
ramparts were guarded by a trembling people; but the tombs and
temples of St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the
suburbs of the Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their invisible
sanctity had protected them against the Goths, the Vandals, and
the Lombards; but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the
legend; and their rapacious spirit was approved and animated by
the precepts of the Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of
their costly offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the
shrine of St. Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were left
entire, their deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather
than the scruples, of the Saracens. In their course along the
Appian way, they pillaged Fundi and besieged Gayeta; but they had
turned aside from the walls of Rome, and by their divisions, the
Capitol was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca. The
same danger still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and
their domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African
emir. They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but
the Carlovingian standard was overthrown by a detachment of the
Barbarians: they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors;
but the attempt was treasonable, and the succor remote and
precarious. ^86 Their distress appeared to receive some
aggravation from the death of their spiritual and temporal chief;
but the pressing emergency superseded the forms and intrigues of
an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth ^87
was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a
Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in
his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect,
like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads
above the fragments of the Roman forum. The first days of his
reign were consecrated to the purification and removal of relics,
to prayers and processions, and to all the solemn offices of
religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and
restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence had been
long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the
distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of
his means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the
ancient walls were repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen
towers, in the most accessible stations, were built or renewed;
two of these commanded on either side of the Tyber; and an iron
chain was drawn across the stream to impede the ascent of a
hostile navy. The Romans were assured of a short respite by the
welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that
a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had
perished in the waves.

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