While the Roman Empire was thus dismembered, the rival power of Persia was not merely dismembered, but utterly overwhelmed. ♦Saracen conquest of Persia. 632-651.♦ The Persian nationality was again, as in the days of the Parthians, held down under a foreign power, to revive yet again ages later. But the Saracen power was very far from merely taking the place of its Parthian and Persian predecessors. The mission of the followers of Mahomet was a mission of universal conquest, and that mission they so far carried out as altogether to overthrow the exclusive dominion of Rome in her own Mediterranean. Under Justinian, if the Imperial possession of the Mediterranean coast was not absolutely continuous, the small exceptions in Africa, Spain, and Gaul in no way interfered with the maritime supremacy of the Empire, and Gaul and Spain, even where they were not Roman, were at least Christian. ♦Saracen conquest of Africa. 647-711.♦ But now a gradual advance of sixty-four years annexed the Roman dominions in Africa to the Mahometan dominion. ♦Of Spain. 711-714.♦ Thence the Saracens passed into Spain, and found the West-Gothic kingdom an easier prey than the Roman provinces. Within three years after the final conquest of Africa, the whole peninsula was conquered, save where the Christian still held out in the inaccessible mountain fastnesses. ♦Saracen provinces in Gaul, 713-755.♦ The Saracen power was even carried beyond the Pyrenees into the province of Septimania, the remnant of the Gaulish dominion of the West-Gothic kings. Narbonne, Arles, Nîmes, all became for a while Saracen cities. ♦Effects of Saracen conquest.♦ In this way, of the three continents round the Mediterranean, Rome lost all her possessions in Africa, while both in Europe and Asia she had now a neighbour and an enemy of quite another kind from any which she had had before. The Teutonic conquerors, if conquerors, had been also disciples; they became part of the Latin world. The Persian, though his rivalry was religious as well as political, was still merely a rival, fighting along a single line of frontier. But every province that was conquered by the Saracens was utterly lopped away; it became the possession of men altogether alien and hostile in race, language, manners, and religion. A large part of the Roman world passed from Aryan and Christian to Semitic and Mahometan dominion. ♦Different fates of the Eastern, Latin, and Greek provinces.♦ But the essential differences among the three main parts of the Empire now showed themselves very clearly. The Eastern provinces, where either Roman or Greek life was always an exotic, fell away at the first touch. ♦647-709.♦ Africa, as being so greatly Romanized, held out for sixty years. The provinces of Asia Minor, now thoroughly Greek, were often ravaged, but never conquered. Spain and Septimania were far more easily conquered than Africa—a sign perhaps that the West-Gothic rule was still felt as foreign by the Roman inhabitants.