Note 330 — THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY

Thus Sykes. But Skrine and Ross say only that seventy members of the Omayyad family were invited to a feast under promise of amnesty, and then massacred by the attendants. Gibbon gives eighty victims, and tells his story thus: “Four score of the Omayyads, who had yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes, were invited to a banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a promiscuous massacre; the board was spread over their fallen bodies; and the festivity of their guests were enlivened by the music of their dying groans.” History is not yet an exact science.