670 HERACLES HERACLIUS S. "W. coast of the island, at the mouth of the river Halycus, said to have been founded by Minos, and hence surnamed Minoa. About 510 B. C. Euryleon came to Sicily with the Spartan prince Dorieus to reclaim the territo- ry of Hercules, and, escaping from the defeat of Dorieus, subdued Heraclea, which prob- ably received its name from him. It rose rapidly in prosperity, but was destroyed by the Carthaginians, and was for many years an insignificant place, subject to the Cartha- ginians or to Agathocles. It revolted in 307, but was soon subdued. It was taken by Pyr- rhus, and in 260 by Hanno, and made a ren- dezvous for the Carthaginian fleet, which there suffered a great defeat from Regulus and Man- lius. It was alternately held by the Romans and Carthaginians, and held out against Mar- cellus even after the fall of Syracuse. III. A city of Bithynia, surnamed Pontica (now Eregli or Erelcli), on the S. shore of the Euxine. It had two good harbors, the smaller made arti- ficially. It was founded by a colony of Megari- ans and Boeotians, and rose to supremacy over the neighboring regions. During the reign of Dionysius, one of its tyrants, in the time of Alexander the Great, it reached great prosper- ity. It suffered from the kings of Bithynia and from the Galatians, and in the war of the Romans against Mithridates it was partly de- stroyed by Aurelius Cotta. (See EREGLI.) HERACLES. See HERCULES. HERACL1DJ3. See GREECE, vol. viii., p. 187. HERACLITFS, a Greek philosopher who flour- ished at the close of the 6th century B. C. He was a native of Ephesus, and from his gloomy disposition was styled the " weeping philoso- pher." In his youth he travelled extensively, and on his return to Ephesus was offered the chief magistracy of the city, but declined it because of the bad morals of the Ephesians, and employed himself in playing at dice near the temple of Diana, declaring even that to be a more profitable occupation than attempting to govern his fellow citizens. Afterward he be- came a confirmed recluse, retiring for a time to the mountains, and living on herbs. His philosophical creed was embodied in a work commonly entitled Tlepi <H<rew?, " On Nature." The most remarkable tenets of this creed were that, by the operation of a light ethereal fluid, constantly active, self-changing, and all-trans- forming, which he denominated fire, all things in the universe, animate and inanimate, mate- rial and immaterial, were created and shaped, and that acquiescence in the decrees of the su- preme law was the great duty of man. His style was so obscure that the Greeks surnamed him " the unintelligible." He was regarded in antiquity as the antipodes of Democritus, the "laughing philosopher." The fragments of his treatise were published by Schleiermacher in Wolf and Buttmann's Museum der Alter- thumswmewchftft, and by Ferdinand Lassalle in his Die Philosophic, HeraTcleitos 1 des Dun- Tccln von Ephesos (2 vols., Berlin, 1858). HERACLIUS, a Roman emperor of the East, born in Cappadocia about A. D. 575, died early in 641. He was the son of Heraclius, exarch of Africa, and first appeared in a public capa- city in 610, when his father sent him with a fleet to besiege Constantinople, and dethrone the tyrant Phocas. This enterprise he accom- plished, and was himself chosen to fill the va- cant throne. At the accession of Heraclius, the empire was in a deplorable condition. The barbarians of the north were laying waste its European provinces, while the Persians, under Chosroes II., were overrunning and ravaging those of the east. The first object of the new emperor was to protect his European dominions and to make provision for their future secu- rity. The king of the Avars having withdrawn from before Constantinople, after treacherously slaying or taking captive immense numbers of citizens who had come out to witness an inter- view between him and Heraclius, the latter allotted that part of Illyricum bordering on the Adriatic and the Danube, which had been depopulated, to the Serbs and Croats, in order that they might serve as a barrier to his N". W. frontier. Then, turning his attention east- ward, as soon as he considered his army suf- ficiently disciplined to take the field, he placed himself at its head, and sailing from the Bos- porus in 622, landed in Cilicia, and encamped on the plain of Issus, where he defeated a large Persian force. From Cilicia he fought his way into Pontus, and afterward returned to Con- stantinople. In the following spring he land- ed at Trapezus (Trebizond) with another army, whence, marching through the regions of the Caucasus, he penetrated into Media, forming alliances and destroying the temples of the Ma- gi as he proceeded. This campaign was closed by a second brilliant victory over the Persians commanded by Chosroes in person. In 625 he invaded Mesopotamia, and returning through Cilicia, gained a third great victory over the Persians on the river Sarus, where he slew with his own hand a gigantic barbarian whom all feared to encounter. The last campaign of this war was by far the most glorious. Constanti- nople was besieged by a great host of Persians and Avars, but instead of going to its relief Heraclius marched into the very heart of the Persian empire, overthrew the enemy in a great battle near Nineveh in December, 627, took Dastagerd, the favorite residence of Chos- roes, and plundered the royal palaces in the vicinity of untold treasure. In 628, Chosroes having been put to death by his son Si roes, the latter acceded to a treaty which closed the war and restored to Heraclius the provinces wrested from his predecessor. But at Edessa, as he was returning from the war, an ambas- sador from Mohammed summoned him to em- brace the faith of the prophet. Heraclius made a treaty of amity with the Arabian potentate ; but in a little time a war broke out between the Arabs and the eastern emperor, in which Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were wrested from
