the judge as well as the master of his
kingdom.

In every word, and in every action, the son of Nushirvan degenerated
from the virtues of his father. His avarice defrauded the troops; his
jealous caprice degraded the satraps; the palace, the tribunals, the
waters of the Tigris, were stained with the blood of the innocent, and
the tyrant exulted in the sufferings and execution of thirteen thousand
victims. As the excuse of his cruelty, he sometimes condescended to
observe, that the fears of the Persians would be productive of hatred,
and that their hatred must terminate in rebellion but he forgot that his
own guilt and folly had inspired the sentiments which he deplored, and
prepared the event which he so justly apprehended. Exasperated by long
and hopeless oppression, the provinces of Babylon, Susa, and Carmania,
erected the standard of revolt; and the princes of Arabia, India, and
Scythia, refused the customary tribute to the unworthy successor of
Nushirvan. The arms of the Romans, in slow sieges and frequent inroads,
afflicted the frontiers of Mesopotamia and Assyria: one of their
generals professed himself the disciple of Scipio; and the soldiers were
animated by a miraculous image of Christ, whose mild aspect should never
have been displayed in the front of battle. [9] At the same time, the
eastern provinces of Persia were invaded by the great khan, who passed
the Oxus at the head of three or four hundred thousand Turks. The
imprudent Hormouz accepted their perfidious and formidable aid; the
cities of Khorassan or Bactriana were commanded to open their gates the
march of the Barbarians towards the mountains of Hyrcania revealed the
correspondence of the Turkish and Roman arms; and their union must have
subverted the throne of the house of Sassan.

[Footnote 8: Buzurg Mihir may be considered, in his character and
station, as the Seneca of the East; but his virtues, and perhaps his
faults, are less known than those of the Roman, who appears to have been
much more loquacious. The Persian sage was the person who imported from
India the game of chess and the fables of Pilpay. Such has been the fame
of his wisdom and virtues, that the Christians claim him as a believer
in the gospel; and the Mahometans revere Buzurg as a premature
Mussulman. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 218.]

[Footnote 9: See the imitation of Scipio in Theophylact, l. i. c. 14;
the image of Christ, l. ii. c. 3. Hereafter I shall speak more am