What was happening to the empire was beginning to be seen as God’s will. Describing the scene as the Persian army moved in for the kill, Antiochus revealed the depths of Roman fatalism, which had by now reached almost apocalyptic levels.
"And as we knew not God nor observed His commandments, God delivered us into the hands of our enemies. The Lord has given over this Holy City to the enemy," he wrote. “The Persians perceived that God had forsaken the Christians and that they had no helper,” so with “increased wrath” they began to build in a circuit around the city great wooden towers on which they placed catapults.
“The struggle lasted 20 days, shooting their catapults with such force that on the 21st day they broke down the city wall. At this, the evil enemy entered the city in great fury, like angry wild beasts and enraged serpents. The men defending the walls fled to hid in caverns, conduits and cisterns to save themselves; and the people fled in crowds to the churches and their altars there they were slaughtered.
For the enemy entered in great wrath, gnashing their teeth in violent fury; like evil beasts they roared, like lions they bellowed, like ferocious serpents they hissed, and slew all they found. Like mad dogs they tore with their teeth the flesh of the faithful, respecting no one, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old, neither child nor baby, neither priest nor monk, neither virgin nor widow. They destroyed persons of every age, slaughtering them like animals, cut them to pieces, mowed many down like cabbages, so that every individual had to drain the full cup of bitterness.”
Would the capital suffer the same fate as Jerusalem? Again the Romans saw what they believed to be their impending doom as the will of God — a punishment from on high for the conduct of their empire... A group of Roman magnates sent a letter across the Bosphorus to the Persian king in which they virtually trembled with guilt and fear.
"Attacked by you as a reward for our sins, the affairs of the Romans have reached this sorry state of weakness," they wrote. They abjectly begged that "your most great majesty, your most peace-loving majesty" — referred to by the Romans in less awkward times as "the Hated of God" — might make peace "by the Grace of God" as soon as possible. "We also beseech your gentleness that you hold our most pious Emperor Heraclius as a true son of yours, for he is ready in all things to concede to Your Serenity due reverence and duty."
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