[Footnote 88: See Ockley, (vol. i. p. 308, 312,) who laughs
at the credulity of his author. When Heraclius bade
farewell to Syria, Vale Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied
that the Romans should never reenter the province till the
birth of an inauspicious child, the future scourge of the
empire. Abulfeda, p. 68. I am perfectly ignorant of the
mystic sense, or nonsense, of this prediction.]