he empire to expose the instant, and almost
inevitable, danger of the kingdom of Italy. Their representations were
uniform, weighty, and effectual. "We stand before your throne, the
advocates of your interest as well as of our own. The ambitious and
faithless Justinian aspires to be the sole master of the world. Since
the endless peace, which betrayed the common freedom of mankind, that
prince, your ally in words, your enemy in actions, has alike insulted
his friends and foes, and has filled the earth with blood and confusion.
Has he not violated the privileges of Armenia, the independence of
Colchos, and the wild liberty of the Tzanian mountains? Has he not
usurped, with equal avidity, the city of Bosphorus on the frozen
Maeotis, and the vale of palm-trees on the shores of the Red Sea? The
Moors, the Vandals, the Goths, have been successively oppressed, and
each nation has calmly remained the spectator of their neighbor's ruin.
Embrace, O king! the favorable moment; the East is left without defence,
while the armies of Justinian and his renowned general are detained in
the distant regions of the West. If you hesitate or delay, Belisarius
and his victorious troops will soon return from the Tyber to the
Tigris, and Persia may enjoy the wretched consolation of being the last
devoured." [61] By such arguments, Chosroes was easily persuaded to
imitate the example which he condemned: but the Persian, ambitious of
military fame, disdained the inactive warfare of a rival, who issued
his sanguinary commands from the secure station of the Byzantine palace.
[Footnote 57: The endless peace (Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 21)
was concluded or ratified in the vith year, and iiid consulship, of
Justinian, (A.D. 533, between January 1 and April 1. Pagi, tom. ii.
p. 550.) Marcellinus, in his Chronicle, uses the style of Medes and
Persians.]

[Footnote 58: Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 26.]

[Footnote 59: Almondar, king of Hira, was deposed by Kobad, and restored
by Nushirvan. His mother, from her beauty, was surnamed Celestial Water,
an appellation which became hereditary, and was extended for a more
noble cause (liberality in famine) to the Arab princes of Syria,
(Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 69, 70.)]

[Footnote 60: Procopius, Persic. l. ii. c. 1. We are ignorant of the
origin and object of this strata, a paved road of ten days' journey from
Auranitis to Babylonia. (See a Latin note in Delisle's Map Imp. Orient.)
Wesseling and D'Anv