Heraclius now determined to lead the Roman army in person, but he was no longer the same man who had kept the field with harness on his back for six long campaigns in the old Persian War. He had now long passed his fiftieth year, and was prematurely broken by the first symptoms of the dropsy which afterwards caused his death. In his private life, too, he had had much trouble of late; he had made an unwise and unhallowed second marriage with his own sister’s daughter Martina, and was harassed by disputes between her and the rest of his family, caused by the fact that the young empress wished to induce her husband to leave her own son Heracleonas joint heir to the empire with his elder brother Heraclius Constantinus. But such as he was, Heraclius once more put on his armour, and spent the years 635-6 in Syria endeavouring to keep back the Arabs with the new levies that he had assembled. His failure was complete; city after city, Emesa, Hierapolis, Chalcis, Beroea, fell into the hands of the Moslems, without the emperor being able even to risk a battle in their defence. In 636, completely broken by disease, he returned to Constantinople, having first paid a hasty visit to Jerusalem to take up and remove the ‘True Cross’ which he had replaced there in triumph only six years before. [Sidenote: Fall of Jerusalem, 637.] After the departure of Heraclius things went from bad to worse; Antioch, the stronghold and capital of northern Syria, and Jerusalem, the centre of the defence of Palestine, both fell in 637. To receive the surrender of Jerusalem, which Mohammed had pronounced only second to Mecca among the holy places of the world, the caliph Omar crossed the desert in person. When the town had yielded, the Arab compelled the patriarch Sophronius to lead him all round the shrines of the city; as they stood in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the patriarch, torn by grief, could not refrain from exclaiming that now indeed was the Abomination of Desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, in the Holy of Holies. The austere Omar showed more moderation and compassion than his generals had been wont to display, he left the Christians all their holy places, and contented himself with building a great mosque on the site of the temple of Solomon.