CHAPTER II

ALAMUNDARUS THE ARAB AND HIS SON NAAMANES

BESIDES his other noble purposes, this was an especial object with the emperor, to avoid in every case the shedding of the blood of persons guilty of treason. Accordingly, he did not put to death Alamundarus, chieftain of the Scenite Arabs, who had betrayed both the commonwealth and Maurice himself, as I have already detailed; but sentenced him to deportation to an island with his wife and some of his children, and appointed Sicily as the place of his banishment. Naamanes his son, notwithstanding a unanimous sentence of death, he detained as a prisoner at large, without any further infliction; although he had filled the empire with endless mischiefs, and, by the hands of his followers, had plundered either Phœnicia and Palestine, and enslaved the inhabitants, at the time when Alamundarus was captured. He pursued the same course in innumerable other cases, which shall be severally noticed in their places.