rmy invaded
Armenia, under a general called Hazaravougd. Vahan allowed himself to be
surprised, to be shut up in the city of Dovin, and to be there besieged.
After a while he made his escape, and renewed the guerilla warfare in
which he was an adept; but the Persians recovered most of the country,
and he was himself, on more than one occasion, driven across the border
and obliged to seek refuge in Roman Armenia, whither his adversary
had no right to follow him. Even here, however, he was not safe.
Hazaravougd, at the risk of a rupture with Rome, pursued his flying foe
across the frontier; and Vahan was for some time in the greatest danger.
But the Persian system of constantly changing the commands of their
chief officers saved him. Hazaravougd received orders from the court to
deliver up Armenia to a newly appointed governor, named Sapor, and to
direct his own efforts to the recovery of Iberia, which was still
in insurrection. In this latter enterprise he was successful; Iberia
submitted to him; and Vakhtang fled to Colchis. But in Armenia the
substitution of Sapor for Hazaravougd led to disaster. After a vain
attempt to procure the assassination of Vahan by two of his officers,
whose wives were Roman prisoners, Sapor moved against him with a strong
body of troops; but the brave Mamigonian, falling upon his assailant
unawares, defeated him with great loss, and dispersed his army. A second
battle was fought with a similar result; and the Persian force, being
demoralized, had to retreat; while Vajian, taking the offensive,
established himself in Dovin, and once more rallied to his side the
great mass of the nation. Affairs were in this state, when suddenly
there arrived from the east intelligence of the most supreme importance,
which produced a pause in the Armenian conflict and led to the placing
of Armenian affairs on a new footing.

Perozes had, from the conclusion of his treaty with the Ephthalite
monarch (ab. A.D. 470), been tormented with the feeling that he had
suffered degradation and disgrace. He had, perhaps, plunged into the
Armenian and other wars in the hope of drowning the recollection of his
shame, in his own mind as well as in the minds of others. But fortune
had not greatly smiled on him in these struggles; and any credit that
he obtained from them was quite insufficient to produce forgetfulness
of his great disaster. Hence, as time went on, he became more and more
anxious to wipe out the memory of the pa