=9. War between the Persian and the Byzantine Empires.=――Early in the next century there was a terrible struggle between the Persians and the Romans, or, to be exact, between the Persians and that Eastern division (all that was left by this date) of the great Roman Empire which held its court at Constantinople, and which was now called the Byzantine Empire. The Jews throughout the Persian dominions, despite recent differences, were loyal to their Persian masters, and helped them to fight and to conquer. Egypt and Syria were wrested from the Romans, and Jerusalem fell before the Persian arms. Throughout the war the Jews helped the Persians loyally as Persian subjects, but in Jerusalem it is to be feared that the Jews fought rather as personal, than as Persian, enemies of Rome. The old scenes brought back the old memories, and Jews remembered only too well and too fiercely. There was terrible fighting in Jerusalem. The church which Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, had built on the ruins of the Temple, was pulled down, the Christians were cruelly massacred or sold as slaves, or sometimes sold as slaves and then massacred. It was to a great extent a religious war, which accounts for its bitterness. The Persians were monotheistic in their faith, and they hated what was pagan in Christianity, the trinity of Gods, the plurality of saints, and the worship of relics. The successes of Chosroes, the Persian Emperor, did not, however, last long. Twenty years later the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius reversed it all. He reduced the Persian ruler to submission, he made Syria and Egypt come again under his control, he rebuilt his churches in Jerusalem, and forbade the Jews, as in the days of Hadrian, to approach within a certain measured distance of its walls. This was contrary to the promise which the Emperor had made to the Jews, and was a weak concession to the wishes of the bishops, who readily, however, gave him absolution for breaking his word. CHAPTER XVII. THE RISE OF MAHOMEDANISM. (600‒650.)