f Armenia was indebted for some
part of his advantages. The throne was disputed by the ambition of
contending brothers; and Hormuz, after exerting without success the
strength of his own party, had recourse to the dangerous assistance of
the barbarians who inhabited the banks of the Caspian Sea. [61] The
civil war was, however, soon terminated, either by a victor or by a
reconciliation; and Narses, who was universally acknowledged as king of
Persia, directed his whole force against the foreign enemy. The contest
then became too unequal; nor was the valor of the hero able to withstand
the power of the monarch, Tiridates, a second time expelled from the
throne of Armenia, once more took refuge in the court of the emperors.
[611] Narses soon reestablished his authority over the revolted province;
and loudly complaining of the protection afforded by the Romans to
rebels and fugitives, aspired to the conquest of the East. [62]

[Footnote 61: Ipsos Persas ipsumque Regem ascitis Saccis, et Russis, et
Gellis, petit frater Ormies. Panegyric. Vet. iii. 1. The Saccae were a
nation of wandering Scythians, who encamped towards the sources of the
Oxus and the Jaxartes. The Gelli where the inhabitants of Ghilan, along
the Caspian Sea, and who so long, under the name of Dilemines, infested
the Persian monarchy. See d'Herbelot, Bibliotheque]

[Footnote 611: M St. Martin represents this differently. Le roi de Perse
* * * profits d'un voyage que Tiridate avoit fait a Rome pour attaquer
ce royaume. This reads like the evasion of the national historians to
disguise the fact discreditable to their hero. See Mem. sur l'Armenie,
i. 304.--M.]

[Footnote 62: Moses of Chorene takes no notice of this second
revolution, which I have been obliged to collect from a passage of
Ammianus Marcellinus, (l. xxiii. c. 5.) Lactantius speaks of the
ambition of Narses: "Concitatus domesticis exemplis avi sui Saporis ad
occupandum orientem magnis copiis inhiabat." De Mort. Persecut. c. 9.]

Neither prudence nor honor could permit the emperors to forsake the
cause of the Armenian king, and it was resolved to exert the force of
the empire in the Persian war. Diocletian, with the calm dignity which
he constantly assumed, fixed his own station in the city of Antioch,
from whence he prepared and directed the military operations. [63] The
conduct of the legions was intrusted to the intrepid valor of Galerius,
who, for that important purpose, was removed from the b