Just as unhappily, and far more disgracefully besides, did things go on in Mesopotamia and Syria. Valerian, who was opposed to Sapor himself, was brought into a most disadvantageous position, where he met with the fate of General Mack near Ulm: he capitulated and became a prisoner, and he is said to have been very shockingly treated. Whether Asiatic ruthlessness went to the length of having him flayed alive, cannot be decided by us: it was also a disputed point, even among the ancients. The Persians now burst like a flood over Syria and Cappadocia, and near Cæsarea they all but fell in with the Goths: Antioch was taken and sacked. Those who escaped from the sword, were led away into bondage, with a barbarity like that of Soliman at the siege of Vienna, when two hundred thousand men lost their life or their freedom: the city was then get fire to. The same fate befel Cæsarea, after a noble defence. The towns on the Persian frontier alone had preserved their walls; but in the interior, in Greece, and in Asia Minor, no one had ever thought of the possibility of an enemy, and therefore the walls had been allowed to go to ruins, or had been pulled down. The whole of Syria was overrun and conquered,—a few strong towns only may have held out; but in the midst of the desert, Palmyra, unobserved by the rest of the world, had risen by degrees into an important commercial mart, and from this city, half Syrian and half Arab, there had grown up a power which made head against Sapor. Under the lead of Odenathus, who is justly reckoned among the great men of the East, it was able to fight for its existence, and to hold its own. Odenathus defeated the rear of Sapor, and was not afraid of facing him in the open field. All the Arabs from the interior having joined him, as it seems, he is called _Princeps Saracenorum_ (from ‏شرق‎ to rise, ‏مشرق‎ the East; as Yemen, the right hand, reckoning from Mecca): the name of Saracens is to be met with long before Mohammed. Odenathus must have got together a great force. On the other side also of the Persian empire, diversions must have been made of which, however, we know nothing: for the relations of the Persians with their eastern neighbours are altogether hidden from us.