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time being sent to the Greek court, not to ask supplies of food, but to
request a subsidy on account of his military operations. The enemy which
had provoked his hostility was the powerful nation of the Ephthalites,
by whose aid he had so recently obtained the Persian crown. According to
a contemporary Greek authority, more worthy of trust than most writers
of his age and nation, the origin of the war was a refusal on the part
of the Ephthalites to make certain customary payments which the Persians
viewed in the light of a tribute. Perozes determined to enforce his just
rights, and marched his troops against the defaulters with this object.
But in his first operations he was unsuccessful, and after a time he
thought it best to conclude the war, and content himself with taking a
secret revenge upon his enemy, by means of an occult insult. He proposed
to Khush-newaz to conclude a treaty of peace, and to strengthen the
compact by adding to it a matrimonial alliance. Khush-newaz should take
to wife one of his daughters, and thus unite the interests of the two
reigning families. The proposal was accepted by the Ephthalite monarch;
and he readily espoused the young lady who was sent to his court
apparelled as became a daughter of Persia. In a little time, however, he
found that he had been tricked: Perozes had not sent him his daughter,
but one of his female slaves; and the royal race of the Ephthalite
kings had been disgraced by a matrimonial union with a person of
servile condition. Khush-newaz was justly indignant; but dissembled his
feelings, and resolved to repay guile with guile. He wrote to Perozes
that it was his intention to make war upon a neighboring tribe, and that
he wanted officers of experience to conduct the military operations. The
Persian monarch, suspecting nothing, complied with the request, and
sent three hundred of his chief officers to Khush-newaz, who immediately
seized them, put some to death, and, mutilating the remainder, commanded
them to return to their sovereign, and inform him that the king of the
Ephthalites now felt that he had sufficiently avenged the trick of which
he had been the victim. On receiving this message Perozes renewed
the war, advanced towards the Ephthalite country, and fixed his
head-quarters in Hyrcania, at the city of Gurgan, He was accompanied by
a Greek of the name of Eusebius, an ambassador from the Emperor Zeno,
who took back to Constantinople the following account of th