of king of the world; while the contest has proved that it could not
belong to either of the competitors. The kingdom of the Turks was
bounded by the Oxus or Gihon; and _Touran_ was separated by that great
river from the rival monarchy of _Iran_, or Persia, which in a smaller
compass contained perhaps a larger measure of power and population. The
Persians, who alternately invaded and repulsed the Turks and the Romans,
were still ruled by the house of Sassan, which ascended the throne
three hundred years before the accession of Justinian. His contemporary,
Cabades, or Kobad, had been successful in war against the emperor
Anastasius; but the reign of that prince was distracted by civil and
religious troubles. A prisoner in the hands of his subjects, an exile
among the enemies of Persia, he recovered his liberty by prostituting
the honor of his wife, and regained his kingdom with the dangerous and
mercenary aid of the Barbarians, who had slain his father. His nobles
were suspicious that Kobad never forgave the authors of his expulsion,
or even those of his restoration. The people was deluded and inflamed by
the fanaticism of Mazdak, who asserted the community of women, and the
equality of mankind, whilst he appropriated the richest lands and
most beautiful females to the use of his sectaries. The view of these
disorders, which had been fomented by his laws and example, imbittered
the declining age of the Persian monarch; and his fears were increased
by the consciousness of his design to reverse the natural and customary
order of succession, in favor of his third and most favored son, so
famous under the names of Chosroes and Nushirvan. To render the youth
more illustrious in the eyes of the nations, Kobad was desirous that he
should be adopted by the emperor Justin: the hope of peace inclined
the Byzantine court to accept this singular proposal; and Chosroes might
have acquired a specious claim to the inheritance of his Roman parent.
But the future mischief was diverted by the advice of the quÊstor
Proclus: a difficulty was started, whether the adoption should
be performed as a civil or military rite; the treaty was abruptly
dissolved; and the sense of this indignity sunk deep into the mind
of Chosroes, who had already advanced to the Tigris on his road to
Constantinople. His father did not long survive the disappointment of
his wishes: the testament of their deceased sovereign was read in the
assembly of the nobles; and a powerful faction, prepared for the event,
and regardless of the priority of age, exalted Chosroes to the throne of
Persia. He filled that throne during a prosperous period of forty-eight
years; and the Justice of Nushirvan is celebrated as the theme of
immortal praise by the nations of the East.
But the justice of kings is understood by themselves, and even by their
subjects, with an ample indulgence for the gratification of passion and
interest. The virtue of Chosroes was that of a conqueror, who, in the
measures of peace and war, is excited by ambition, and restrained by
prudence; who confounds the greatness with the happiness of a nation,
and calmly devotes the lives of thousands to the fame, or even the
amusement, of a single man. In his domestic administration, the just
Nushirvan would merit in our feelings the appellation of a tyrant. His
two elder brothers had been deprived of their fair expectations of the
diadem: their future life, between the supreme rank and the condition of
subjects, was anxious to themselves and formidable to their master: fear
as well as revenge might tempt them to rebel: the slightest evidence
of a conspiracy satisfied the author of their wrongs; and the repose of
Chosroes was secured by the death of these unhappy princes, with their
families and adherents. One guiltless youth was saved and dismissed by
the compassion of a veteran general; and this act of humanity, which was
revealed by his son, overbalanced the merit of reducing twelve nations
to the obedience of Persia. The zeal and prudence of Mebodes had fixed
the diadem on the head of Chosroes himself; but he delayed to attend the
royal summons, till he had performed the duties of a military review: he
was instantly commanded to repair to the iron tripod, which stood before
the gate of the palace, where it was death to relieve or approach the
victim; and Mebodes languished several days before his sentence was
pronounced, by the inflexible pride and calm ingratitude of the son
of Kobad. But the people, more especially in the East, is disposed to
forgive, and even to applaud, the cruelty which strikes at the loftiest
heads; at the slaves of ambition, whose voluntary choice has exposed
them to live in the smiles, and to perish by the frown, of a capricious
monarch. In the execution of the laws which he had no temptation to
violate; in the punishment of crimes which attacked his own dignity, as
well as the happiness of individuals; Nushirvan, or Chosroes, deserved
the appellation of _just_. His government was firm, rigorous, and
impartial. It was the first labor of his reign to abolish the dangerous
theory of common or equal possessions: the lands and women which the
sectaries of Mazdak has usurped were restored to their lawful owners;
and the temperate chastisement of the fanatics or impostors confirmed
the domestic rights of society. Instead of listening with blind
confidence to a favorite minister, he established four viziers over
the four great provinces of his empire, Assyria, Media, Persia, and
Bactriana. In the choice of judges, prÊfects, and counsellors, he strove
to remove the mask which is always worn in the presence of kings: he
wished to substitute the natural order of talents for the accidental
distinctions of birth and fortune; he professed, in specious language,
his intention to prefer those men who carried the poor in their bosoms,
and to banish corruption from the seat of justice, as dogs were excluded
from the temples of the Magi. The code of laws of the first Artaxerxes
was revived and published as the rule of the magistrates; but the
assurance of speedy punishment was the best security of their virtue.
Their behavior was inspected by a thousand eyes, their words were
overheard by a thousand ears, the secret or public agents of the
throne; and the provinces, from the Indian to the Arabian confines,
were enlightened by the frequent visits of a sovereign, who affected
to emulate his celestial brother in his rapid and salutary career.
Education and agriculture he viewed as the two objects most deserving of
his care. In every city of Persia orphans, and the children of the poor,
were maintained and instructed at the public expense; the daughters were
given in marriage to the richest citizens of their own rank, and the
sons, according to their different talents, were employed in mechanic
trades, or promoted to more honorable service. The deserted villages
were relieved by his bounty; to the peasants and farmers who were found
incapable of cultivating their lands, he distributed cattle, seed, and
the instruments of husbandry; and the rare and inestimable treasure of
fresh water was parsimoniously managed, and skilfully dispersed over the
arid territory of Persia. The prosperity of that kingdom was the effect
and evidence of his virtues; his vices are those of Oriental despotism;
but in the long competition between Chosroes and Justinian, the
advantage both of merit and fortune is almost always on the side of the
Barbarian.
To the praise of justice Nushirvan united the reputation of knowledge;
and the seven Greek philosophers, who visited his court, were invited
and deceived by the strange assurance, that a disciple of Plato
was seated on the Persian throne. Did they expect, that a prince,
strenuously exercised in the toils of war and government, should
agitate, with dexterity like their own, the abstruse and profound
questions which amused the leisure of the schools of Athens? Could they
hope that the precepts of philosophy should direct the life, and control
the passions, of a despot, whose infancy had been taught to consider his
absolute and fluctuating will as the only rule of moral obligation? The
studies of Chosroes were ostentatious and superficial: but his example
awakened the curiosity of an ingenious people, and the light of science
was diffused over the dominions of Persia. At Gondi Sapor, in the
neighborhood of the royal city of Susa, an academy of physic was
founded, which insensibly became a liberal school of poetry, philosophy,
and rhetoric. The annals of the monarchy were composed; and while recent
and authentic history might afford some useful lessons both to the
prince and people, the darkness of the first ages was embellished by the
giants, the dragons, and the fabulous heroes of Oriental romance. Every
learned or confident stranger was enriched by the bounty, and flattered
by the conversation, of the monarch: he nobly rewarded a Greek
physician, by the deliverance of three thousand, captives; and the
sophists, who contended for his favor, were exasperated by the wealth
and insolence of Uranius, their more successful rival. Nushirvan
believed, or at least respected, the religion of the Magi; and some
traces of persecution may be discovered in his reign. Yet he allowed
himself freely to compare the tenets of the various sects; and the
theological disputes, in which he frequently presided, diminished the
authority of the priest, and enlightened the minds of the people. At his
command, the most celebrated writers of Greece and India were translated
into the Persian language; a smooth and elegant idiom, recommended by
Mahomet to the use of paradise; though it is branded with the epithets
of savage and unmusical, by the ignorance and presumption of Agathias.
Yet the Greek historian might reasonably wonder that it should be
found possible to execute an entire version of Plato and Aristotle in
a foreign dialect, which had not been framed to express the spirit of
freedom and the subtilties of philosophic disquisition. And, if the
reason of the Stagyrite might be equally dark, or equally intelligible
in every tongue, the dramatic art and verbal argumentation of the
disciple of Socrates, appear to be indissolubly mingled with the grace
and perfection of his Attic style. In the search of universal knowledge,
Nushirvan was informed, that the moral and political fables of Pilpay,
an ancient Brachman, were preserved with jealous reverence among the
treasures of the kings of India. The physician Perozes was secretly
despatched to the banks of the Ganges, with instructions to procure,
at any price, the communication of this valuable work. His dexterity
obtained a transcript, his learned diligence accomplished the
translation; and the fables of Pilpay were read and admired in the
assembly of Nushirvan and his nobles. The Indian original, and the
Persian copy, have long since disappeared; but this venerable monument
has been saved by the curiosity of the Arabian caliphs, revived in
the modern Persic, the Turkish, the Syriac, the Hebrew, and the Greek
idioms, and transfused through successive versions into the modern
languages of Europe. In their present form, the peculiar character, the
manners and religion of the Hindoos, are completely obliterated; and the
intrinsic merit of the fables of Pilpay is far inferior to the concise
elegance of PhÊdrus, and the native graces of La Fontaine. Fifteen moral
and political sentences are illustrated in a series of apologues: but
the composition is intricate, the narrative prolix, and the precept
obvious and barren. Yet the Brachman may assume the merit of
_inventing_ a pleasing fiction, which adorns the nakedness of truth, and
alleviates, perhaps, to a royal ear, the harshness of instruction. With
a similar design, to admonish kings that they are strong only in the
strength of their subjects, the same Indians invented the game of chess,
which was likewise introduced into Persia under the reign of Nushirvan.
Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.--Part III.
The son of Kobad found his kingdom involved in a war with the successor
of Constantine; and the anxiety of his domestic situation inclined
him to grant the suspension of arms, which Justinian was impatient to
purchase. Chosroes saw the Roman ambassadors at his feet. He accepted
eleven thousand pounds of gold, as the price of an _endless_ or
indefinite peace: some mutual exchanges were regulated; the Persian
assumed the guard of the gates of Caucasus, and the demolition of Dara
was suspended, on condition that it should never be made the residence
of the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited,
and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his African
conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty; and the avarice
of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage,
which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the
color of friendship. But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the
slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment, envy, and
fear, that Sicily, Italy, and Rome itself, had been reduced, in three
rapid campaigns, to the obedience of Justinian. Unpractised in the art
of violating treaties, he secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal
Almondar. That prince of the Saracens, who resided at Hira, had not been
included in the general peace, and still waged an obscure war against
his rival Arethas, the chief of the tribe of Gassan, and confederate of
the empire. The subject of their dispute was an extensive sheep-walk
in the desert to the south of Palmyra. An immemorial tribute for the
license of pasture appeared to attest the rights of Almondar, while
the Gassanite appealed to the Latin name of strata, a paved road, as an
unquestionable evidence of the sovereignty and labors of the Romans. The
two monarchs supported the cause of their respective vassals; and
the Persian Arab, without expecting the event of a slow and doubtful
arbitration, enriched his flying camp with the spoil and captives of
Syria. Instead of repelling the arms, Justinian attempted to seduce the
fidelity of Almondar, while he called from the extremities of the earth
the nations of ∆thiopia and Scythia to invade the dominions of his
rival. But the aid of such allies was distant and precarious, and the
discovery of this hostile correspondence justified the complaints of
the Goths and Armenians, who implored, almost at the same time, the
protection of Chosroes. The descendants of Arsaces, who were still
numerous in Armenia, had been provoked to assert the last relics of
national freedom and hereditary rank; and the ambassadors of Vitiges
had secretly traversed the empire to expose the instant, and almost
inevitable, danger of the kingdom of Italy. Their representations were
uniform, weighty, and effectual. "We stand before your throne, the
advocates of your interest as well as of our own. The ambitious and
faithless Justinian aspires to be the sole master of the world. Since
the endless peace, which betrayed the common freedom of mankind, that
prince, your ally in words, your enemy in actions, has alike insulted
his friends and foes, and has filled the earth with blood and confusion.
Has he not violated the privileges of Armenia, the independence of
Colchos, and the wild liberty of the Tzanian mountains? Has he not
usurped, with equal avidity, the city of Bosphorus on the frozen MÊotis,
and the vale of palm-trees on the shores of the Red Sea? The Moors, the
Vandals, the Goths, have been successively oppressed, and each nation
has calmly remained the spectator of their neighbor's ruin. Embrace, O
king! the favorable moment; the East is left without defence, while the
armies of Justinian and his renowned general are detained in the distant
regions of the West. If you hesitate or delay, Belisarius and his
victorious troops will soon return from the Tyber to the Tigris, and
Persia may enjoy the wretched consolation of being the last devoured."
By such arguments, Chosroes was easily persuaded to imitate the example
which he condemned: but the Persian, ambitious of military fame,
disdained the inactive warfare of a rival, who issued his sanguinary
commands from the secure station of the Byzantine palace.
Whatever might be the provocations of Chosroes, he abused the confidence
of treaties; and the just reproaches of dissimulation and falsehood
could only be concealed by the lustre of his victories. The Persian
army, which had been assembled in the plains of Babylon, prudently
declined the strong cities of Mesopotamia, and followed the western
bank of the Euphrates, till the small, though populous, town of Dura
presumed to arrest the progress of the great king. The gates of Dura,
by treachery and surprise, were burst open; and as soon as Chosroes had
stained his cimeter with the blood of the inhabitants, he dismissed the
ambassador of Justinian to inform his master in what place he had left
the enemy of the Romans. The conqueror still affected the praise of
humanity and justice; and as he beheld a noble matron with her infant
rudely dragged along the ground, he sighed, he wept, and implored the
divine justice to punish the author of these calamities. Yet the herd
of twelve thousand captives was ransomed for two hundred pounds of gold;
the neighboring bishop of Sergiopolis pledged his faith for the payment:
and in the subsequent year the unfeeling avarice of Chosroes exacted
the penalty of an obligation which it was generous to contract and
impossible to discharge. He advanced into the heart of Syria: but a
feeble enemy, who vanished at his approach, disappointed him of the
honor of victory; and as he could not hope to establish his dominion,
the Persian king displayed in this inroad the mean and rapacious vices
of a robber. Hierapolis, BerrhÊa or Aleppo, Apamea and Chalcis, were
successively besieged: they redeemed their safety by a ransom of gold
or silver, proportioned to their respective strength and opulence; and
their new master enforced, without observing, the terms of capitulation.
Educated in the religion of the Magi, he exercised, without remorse, the
lucrative trade of sacrilege; and, after stripping of its gold and gems
a piece of the true cross, he generously restored the naked relic to the
devotion of the Christians of Apamea. No more than fourteen years had
elapsed since Antioch was ruined by an earthquake; but the queen of
the East, the new Theopolis, had been raised from the ground by the
liberality of Justinian; and the increasing greatness of the buildings
and the people already erased the memory of this recent disaster. On one
side, the city was defended by the mountain, on the other by the River
Orontes; but the most accessible part was commanded by a superior
eminence: the proper remedies were rejected, from the despicable fear
of discovering its weakness to the enemy; and Germanus, the emperor's
nephew, refused to trust his person and dignity within the walls of
a besieged city. The people of Antioch had inherited the vain and
satirical genius of their ancestors: they were elated by a sudden
reÎnforcement of six thousand soldiers; they disdained the offers of
an easy capitulation and their intemperate clamors insulted from the
ramparts the majesty of the great king. Under his eye the Persian
myriads mounted with scaling-ladders to the assault; the Roman
mercenaries fled through the opposite gate of Daphne; and the generous
assistance of the youth of Antioch served only to aggravate the miseries
of their country. As Chosroes, attended by the ambassadors of Justinian,
was descending from the mountain, he affected, in a plaintive voice, to
deplore the obstinacy and ruin of that unhappy people; but the slaughter
still raged with unrelenting fury; and the city, at the command of a
Barbarian, was delivered to the flames. The cathedral of Antioch was
indeed preserved by the avarice, not the piety, of the conqueror: a more
honorable exemption was granted to the church of St. Julian, and the
quarter of the town where the ambassadors resided; some distant streets
were saved by the shifting of the wind, and the walls still subsisted
to protect, and soon to betray, their new inhabitants. Fanaticism had
defaced the ornaments of Daphne, but Chosroes breathed a purer air
amidst her groves and fountains; and some idolaters in his train might
sacrifice with impunity to the nymphs of that elegant retreat. Eighteen
miles below Antioch, the River Orontes falls into the Mediterranean. The
haughty Persian visited the term of his conquests; and, after bathing
alone in the sea, he offered a solemn sacrifice of thanksgiving to the
sun, or rather to the Creator of the sun, whom the Magi adored. If this
act of superstition offended the prejudices of the Syrians, they were
pleased by the courteous and even eager attention with which he assisted
at the games of the circus; and as Chosroes had heard that the _blue_
faction was espoused by the emperor, his peremptory command secured the
victory of the _green_ charioteer. From the discipline of his camp the
people derived more solid consolation; and they interceded in vain for
the life of a soldier who had too faithfully copied the rapine of the
just Nushirvan. At length, fatigued, though unsatiated, with the spoil
of Syria, he slowly moved to the Euphrates, formed a temporary bridge
in the neighborhood of Barbalissus, and defined the space of three
days for the entire passage of his numerous host. After his return,
he founded, at the distance of one day's journey from the palace of
Ctesiphon, a new city, which perpetuated the joint names of Chosroes
and of Antioch. The Syrian captives recognized the form and situation
of their native abodes: baths and a stately circus were constructed for
their use; and a colony of musicians and charioteers revived in Assyria
the pleasures of a Greek capital. By the munificence of the royal
founder, a liberal allowance was assigned to these fortunate exiles; and
they enjoyed the singular privilege of bestowing freedom on the slaves
whom they acknowledged as their kinsmen. Palestine, and the holy wealth
of Jerusalem, were the next objects that attracted the ambition, or
rather the avarice, of Chosroes. Constantinople, and the palace of the
CÊsars, no longer appeared impregnable or remote; and his aspiring fancy
already covered Asia Minor with the troops, and the Black Sea with the
navies, of Persia.