At length the survivors emerged to look down from the mountains upon the borders of Syria. The sight inspired them as that from Pisgah did the invader of old. Courage revived, and with joy they hastened southward. Hard by was the battle-field of Issus, where Alexander the Great, the man from the West, had broken the power of the East under Xerxes—an omen of its repetition. Soon Antioch, the city built to commemorate the fame of Antiochus, one of Alexander’s generals, stood before them. The rumor of their invincibility had served the crusaders in the stead of battles, and October 21, 1097, they sat down unmolested for the siege of the Syrian capital. This city, where a thousand years before believers were first called Christians, still wore in the reverence of all the world the honor of that initial christening. It was called the “Eldest Daughter of Sion,” and was the seat of one of the original patriarchates into which the early church was divided. It had been the third city of the Roman world, and those who were unimpressed with its sacred story could imagine its splendor when it was called the “Queen of the East.” Paganism once worshipped obscene divinities in its famous groves of Daphne. About it still stood the enormous wall built by the Emperor Justinian five hundred years before, on every tower of which were mementos of sieges when it had been captured alternately by Saracen and Greek, and now, but thirteen years before the crusaders’ coming, by Solyman, the Turk. The natural defences of Antioch, supplemented by those of art, made it impregnable, except to the enthusiastic faith of such men as now essayed its capture. On the north it was guarded by the river Orontes, on the south by natural heights of several hundred feet, on the west by the great citadel, and on the east by a castle. The wall which bound together the various fortifications was nine miles in extent, strengthened by three hundred and sixty towers. A deep cleft in the southern height poured a mountain torrent through the city to the Orontes. Accian, grandson of Malek-Shah, had twenty thousand Turks within the walls, who behind such battlements were presumably the match for the three hundred thousand crusaders who are said to have been without.