hat, to insure manvantaric times
coming in. But the old man remembers a nephew of his back there
in Bulgaria or Jugoslavia or where it may have been; and sends
for him, and very wisely lets him do most of the running of
things. In 527, this nephew succeeds to the purple on his
uncle's death: as Justinian; and, for Europe and the Byzantine
empire, and for the times,--that is to say, 'considering,'
--manvantaric doings do begin. A man of hugely sanguine
temperament, inquisitive and enterprising and impulsive, he had
the fortune to be served by some great men: Tibonian, who drew
up the Pandects; Belisarius and Narses, who thrashed the
barbarians; the architect who built Saint Sophia. Against these
assets to his reign of thirty-eight years you must set the
factions of the circus, at Constantinople itself; and bloody
battle over the merits of the Greens, the Blues, the Whites, etc.
But certainly Justinian contrived to strike into history as no
other Byzantine emperor did; with his law code, and with his
church. So now enough of him.

Four years after the accession of this greatest of the Byzantines,
the greatest of the Sassanids came to the throne in Persia:
Chosroes Anushirwan: a wise and victorious reign until 579.
There was an 'Endless Peace' sworn with Rome in 533; and
not peace merely, but friendship and alliance; it was to last
for all time, and did last for seven years. The Chosroes,
jealous of the western victories of Justinian, listened to the
pleadings of the Ostrogoths, and declared war; peace came again
in 563, on the basis of a yearly tribute from Rome to Persia,--
but with compensations, such as toleration for the Christians in
Persia.--there were reforms in the army and in taxation;
improvements in irrigation; encouragement of learning;
revision of the laws; some little outburst in literature and
culture generally: the culmination, in all but extent of
territory, of the whole Sassanian period.--We may throw in one
item from the future,--that is from 620: in that year Sassanian
Persia had flowed out to the full limits of the empire of Darius
Hystaspes: held Egypt, Syria, all West Asia to within a mile of
the walls of Constantinople. Within three years the fall had
begun; within twenty it was completed.

As to India, this (520) is among the hidden times: the
Ephthalites had overturned the Guptas; they were Huns of the
Hunniest; they had over-turned the Guptas and all else (in the
north). Tal