ir channels.
Famine under these circumstances of necessity sets in; the poor die by
hundreds; even the rich have a difficulty in sustaining life by means of
food imported from a distance. We are told that the drought in the reign
of Perozes was such that at last there was not a drop of water either in
the Tigris or the Oxus; all the sources and fountains, all the streams
and brooks failed; vegetation altogether ceased; the beasts of the field
and the fowls of the air perished; nowhere through the whole empire
was a bird to be seen; the wild animals, even the reptiles, disappeared
altogether. The dreadful calamity lasted for seven years, and under
ordinary circumstances the bulk of the population would have been
swept off; but such were the "wisdom and the beneficence of the Persian
monarch," that during the entire duration of the scourge not a single
person, or, according to another account, but one person, perished of
hunger. Perozes began by issuing general orders that the rich should
come to the relief of their poorer brethren; he required the governors
of towns, and the head-men of villages, to see that food was supplied
to those in need, and threatened that for each poor man in a town or
village who died of want he would put a rich man to death. At the end of
two years, finding that the drought continued, he declined to take any
revenue from his subjects, remitting taxes of all kinds, whether they
were money imposts or contributions in kind. In the fourth year, not
content with these measures, he went further: opened the treasury doors
and made distributions of money from his own stores to those in need. At
the same time he imported corn from Greece, from India, from the valley
of the Oxus, and from Abyssinia, obtaining by these means such ample
supplies that he was able to furnish an adequate sustenance to all his
subjects. The result was that not only did the famine cause no mortality
among the poorer classes, but no one was even driven to quit the country
in order to escape the pressure of the calamity.

Such is the account which is given by the Oriental authors of the
terrible famine which they ascribe to the early part of the reign of
Perozes. It is difficult, however, to suppose that the matter has not
been very much exaggerated, since we find that, as early as A.D. 464-5,
when the famine should have been at its height, Perozes had entered upon
a great war and was hotly engaged in it, his ambassadors at the sa