robability of such a course of
action, it is perhaps allowable to suppose that Procopius has been for
once carried away by partisanship, and that the real difference between
the case of Daras and the other towns consisted in this, that Daras
alone refused to pay its ransom, and Chosroes had, in consequence, to
resort to hostilities in order to enforce it.

Still, no doubt, the whole conduct of Chosroes in enforcing ransoms
from the towns after the conclusion of the truce was open to serious
question, and Justinian was quite justified in treating his proceedings
as a violation of his recent engagements. It is not unlikely that, even
without any such excuse, he would shortly have renewed the struggle,
since the return of Belisarius in triumph from the Italian war had
placed at his service for employment in the East a general from whose
abilities much was naturally expected. As it was, Justinian was able, on
receiving intelligence of the fines levied on Apameia, Chalcis, Edessa,
Constantina, and Daras, and of the hostile acts committed against the
last-named place, with great show of reason and justice, to renounce the
recently concluded peace, and to throw on the ill faith of Chosroes the
blame of the rupture.

The Persian prince seems to have paid but little heed to the
denunciation. He passed the winter in building and beautifying a Persian
Antioch in the neighborhood of Ctesiphon, assigning it as a residence
to his Syrian captives, for whose use he constructed public baths and
a spacious hippodrome, where the entertainments familiar to them from
their youth were reproduced by Syrian artists. The new city was
exempt from the jurisdiction of Persian satraps, and was made directly
dependent upon the king, who supplied it with corn gratuitously, and
allowed it to become an inviolable asylum for all such Greek slaves as
should take shelter in it, and be acknowledged as their kinsmen by any
of the inhabitants. A model of Greek civilization was thus brought into
close contact with the Persian court, which could amuse itself with the
contrasts, if it did not learn much from the comparison, of European and
Asiatic manners and modes of thought.

The campaign of A.D. 540 was followed by one of a very different
character in A.D. 541. An unexpected offer suddenly made to the Persian
king drew him from his capital, together with the bulk of his troops, to
one of the remotest portions of the Persian territory, and allowed the
Roma