After nine years of reign the Amorian died a natural death, still wearing the crown he had won. It was just fifty years since any ruler of the empire had met such a peaceful end. He was succeeded by his son Theophilus, a vehement Iconoclast, whose persecuting tendencies had been with difficulty restrained in his father’s life-time. His accession was the signal for a new campaign against image-worship; he induced the patriarch John the Grammarian, a strong Iconoclast like himself, to excommunicate as idolaters all who differed from him, and began to flog, banish, and imprison their leading men. His persecution would have been almost as vehement as that of Constantine Copronymus, but for the fact that he did not ever inflict the punishment of death; branding and mutilation however he did not disdain. The Iconodules saw the vengeance of heaven for the misdeeds of Theophilus in the disasters which he suffered in war from the Saracens. He fell out with the Caliph Motassem, and in the first campaign took and burnt the town of Zapetra, for which the Commander of the Faithful had great regard.(24) This roused Motassem to furious wrath; he swore that he would destroy in revenge the town which Theophilus held most dear; he collected the largest Saracen army that had been seen since Moslemah beleaguered Constantinople in 717, and marched out of Tarsus with 130,000 men, each of whom (if legend speaks true) had the word Amorium painted on his shield. For it was Amorium, the birth-place of the Emperor, and the home of his ancestors that Motassem had sworn to sack. While one division of the Caliph’s army defeated Theophilus, who had taken the field in person, another headed by Motassem himself marched straight on Amorium, and took it after a brave defence of fifty-five days. Thirty thousand of its inhabitants were massacred, and the town was burnt, but the Caliph then turned home satisfied with his revenge, and the empire suffered nothing more from this most dangerous invasion. The Saracen war dragged on in an indecisive way, but no further disaster was encountered. There are other things to be recorded of Theophilus beside his persecution of image-worshippers and his war with the Caliph. He was long remembered for his taste for gorgeous display; of all the East-Roman emperors he seems to have delighted the most in gold and silver work, gems and embroidery. His golden plane-tree was the talk of the East, and the golden lions at the foot of his throne, which rose and roared by the means of ingenious machinery within, were remembered for generations.