ille are silent.]
[Footnote 61: I have blended, in a short speech, the two orations of
the Arsacides of Armenia and the Gothic ambassadors. Procopius, in his
public history, feels, and makes us feel, that Justinian was the true
author of the war, (Persic. l. ii. c. 2, 3.)]
Whatever might be the provocations of Chosroes, he abused the confidence
of treaties; and the just reproaches of dissimulation and falsehood
could only be concealed by the lustre of his victories. [62] The Persian
army, which had been assembled in the plains of Babylon, prudently
declined the strong cities of Mesopotamia, and followed the western bank
of the Euphrates, till the small, though populous, town of Dura [6211]
presumed to arrest the progress of the great king. The gates of Dura,
by treachery and surprise, were burst open; and as soon as Chosroes had
stained his cimeter with the blood of the inhabitants, he dismissed the
ambassador of Justinian to inform his master in what place he had left
the enemy of the Romans. The conqueror still affected the praise of
humanity and justice; and as he beheld a noble matron with her infant
rudely dragged along the ground, he sighed, he wept, and implored the
divine justice to punish the author of these calamities. Yet the herd
of twelve thousand captives was ransomed for two hundred pounds of gold;
the neighboring bishop of Sergiopolis pledged his faith for the payment:
and in the subsequent year the unfeeling avarice of Chosroes exacted
the penalty of an obligation which it was generous to contract and
impossible to discharge. He advanced into the heart of Syria: but a
feeble enemy, who vanished at his approach, disappointed him of the
honor of victory; and as he could not hope to establish his dominion,
the Persian king displayed in this inroad the mean and rapacious vices
of a robber. Hierapolis, Berrhaea or Aleppo, Apamea and Chalcis, were
successively besieged: they redeemed their safety by a ransom of gold
or silver, proportioned to their respective strength and opulence; and
their new master enforced, without observing, the terms of capitulation.
Educated in the religion of the Magi, he exercised, without remorse, the
lucrative trade of sacrilege; and, after stripping of its gold and gems
a piece of the true cross, he generously restored the naked relic to the
devotion of the Christians of Apamea. No more than fourteen years had
elapsed since Antioch was ruined by an earthquake; [6212] but the qu
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