es saw the Roman ambassadors at his feet. He accepted
eleven thousand pounds of gold, as the price of an endless or indefinite
peace: [57] some mutual exchanges were regulated; the Persian assumed
the guard of the gates of Caucasus, and the demolition of Dara was
suspended, on condition that it should never be made the residence of
the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited,
and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his African
conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty; and the avarice
of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage,
which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the
color of friendship. [58] But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the
slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment, envy, and
fear, that Sicily, Italy, and Rome itself, had been reduced, in three
rapid campaigns, to the obedience of Justinian. Unpractised in the art
of violating treaties, he secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal
Almondar. That prince of the Saracens, who resided at Hira, [59] had
not been included in the general peace, and still waged an obscure
war against his rival Arethas, the chief of the tribe of Gassan, and
confederate of the empire. The subject of their dispute was an extensive
sheep-walk in the desert to the south of Palmyra. An immemorial tribute
for the license of pasture appeared to attest the rights of Almondar,
while the Gassanite appealed to the Latin name of strata, a paved road,
as an unquestionable evidence of the sovereignty and labors of the
Romans. [60] The two monarchs supported the cause of their respective
vassals; and the Persian Arab, without expecting the event of a slow
and doubtful arbitration, enriched his flying camp with the spoil and
captives of Syria. Instead of repelling the arms, Justinian attempted to
seduce the fidelity of Almondar, while he called from the extremities of
the earth the nations of Aethiopia and Scythia to invade the dominions
of his rival. But the aid of such allies was distant and precarious, and
the discovery of this hostile correspondence justified the complaints
of the Goths and Armenians, who implored, almost at the same time,
the protection of Chosroes. The descendants of Arsaces, who were still
numerous in Armenia, had been provoked to assert the last relics of
national freedom and hereditary rank; and the ambassadors of Vitiges
had secretly traversed t