aces, an Armenian chief, were the most important
of these applicants. Embassies from these opposite quarters reached
Chosroes in the same year, A.D. 539, and urged him for his own security
to declare war against Justinian before it was too late. "Justinian,"
the ambassadors said, "aimed at universal empire. His aspirations had
for a while been kept in check by Persia, and by Persia alone, the sole
power in the world that he feared. Since the 'endless peace' was made,
he had felt himself free to give full vent to his ambitious greed,
had commenced a course of aggression upon all the other conterminous
nations, and had spread war and confusion on all sides. He had destroyed
the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa, conquered the Moors, deceived the
Goths of Italy by professions of friendship, and then fallen upon them
with all his forces, violated the rights of Armenia and driven it to
rebellion, enslaved the Tzani and the Lazi, seized the Greek city
of Bosporus, and the 'Isle of Palms' on the shores of the Red Sea,
solicited the alliance of barbarous Huns and Ethiopians, striven to sow
discord between the Persian monarch and his vassals, and in every part
of the world shown himself equally grasping and restless. What would be
the consequence if Persia continued to hold aloof? Simply that all the
other nations would in turn be destroyed, and she would find herself
face to face with their destroyer, and would enjoy the poor satisfaction
of being devoured last. But did she fear to be reproached with breaking
the treaty and forfeiting her pledged word? Rome had already broken it
by her intrigues with the Huns, the Ethiopians, and the Saracens; and
Persia would therefore be free from reproach if she treated the peace
as no longer existing. The treaty-breaker is not he who first draws the
sword, but he who sets the example of seeking the other's hurt. Or did
Persia fear the result of declaring war? Such fear was unreasonable,
for Rome had neither troops, nor generals to oppose to a sudden Persian
attack. Sittas was dead; Belisarius and the best of the Roman forces
were in Italy. If Justinian recalled Belisarius, it was not certain that
he would obey; and, in the worst case, it would be in favor of Persia
that the Goths of Italy, and the Armenians who for centuries had been
subjects of Rome, were now ready to make common cause with her." Thus
urged, the Persian king determined on openly declaring war and making an
attack in force on