masp_, i.e. "Zamaspes," or "the divine
Zamaspes." [PLATE XXII., Fig. 1.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXII.]

CHAPTER XIX.

_Second Reign of Kobad. His Change of Attitude towards the Followers of
Mazdak. His Cause of Quarrel with Rome. First Roman War of Kobad. Peace
made A.D. 505. Rome fortifies Daras and Theodosiopolis. Complaint made
by Persia. Negotiations of Kobad with Justin: Proposed Adoption of
Chosroes by the Latter. Internal Troubles in Persia. Second Roman War of
Kobad, A.D. 524-531. Death of Kobad. His Character. His coins._

The second reign of Kobad covered a period of thirty years, extending
from A.D. 501 to A.D. 531. He was contemporary, during this space, with
the Roman emperors Anastasius, Justin, and Justinian, with Theodoric,
king of Italy, with Cassiodorus, Symmachus, Boethius, Procopius, and
Belisarius. The Oriental writers tell us but little of this portion of
his history. Their silence, however, is fortunately compensated by the
unusual copiousness of the Byzantines, who deliver, at considerable
length, the entire series of transactions in which Kobad was engaged
with the Constantinopolitan emperors, and furnish some interesting
notices of other matters which occupied him. Procopius especially, the
eminent rhetorician and secretary of Belisarius, who was born about the
time of Kobad's restoration to the Persian thrones and became secretary
to the great general four years before Kobad's death, is ample in his
details of the chief occurrences, and deserves a confidence which the
Byzantines can rarely claim, from being at once a contemporary and a man
of remarkable intelligence. "His facts," as Gibbon well observes, "are
collected from the personal experience and free conversation of a
soldier, a statesman, and a traveller; his style continually aspires,
and often attains, to the merit of strength and elegance; his,
reflections, more especially in the speeches, which he too frequently
inserts, contain a rich fund of political knowledge; and the historian,
excited by the generous ambition of pleasing and instructing posterity,
appears to disdain the prejudices of the people and the flattery of
courts."

The first question which Kobad had to decide, when, by the voluntary
cession of his brother, Zamasp, he remounted his throne, was the
attitude which he should assume towards Mazdak and his followers. By
openly favoring the new religion and encouraging the disorders of its
votaries, he had s