tue 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, are 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 labour of his reign to abolish the dangerous theory of common or equal possessions: the lands and women which the sectaries of Mazdak had 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 favourite minister, he established four viziers over the four great provinces of his empire, Assyria, Media, Persia, and Bactriana. In the choice of judges, præfects, and counsellors, he strove to remove the mask which is always worn in

Procopius, Persic. 1. i. c. 23. Brisson de Regn. Pers. p. 494. The gate of the palace of Ispahan is, or was, the fatal scene of disgrace or death. (Chardin, Voyage en Perse, tom. iv. p. 312, 313.)

x In Persia, the prince of the waters is an officer of state. The num ber of wells and subterraneous channels is much diminished, and with it the fertility of the soil: 400 wells have been recently lost near Tauris, and 42,000 were once reckoned in the province of Khorasan. (Chardin, tom. iii. p. 99, 100. Tavernier, tom. i. p. 466.)

y The character and government of Nushirvan are represented sometimes in the words of D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 680, &c. from

the presence of kings: he wished to substitue 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 behaviour 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 honourable 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 the 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."

His love of learning.

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

Khondemir) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 179, 180.-very rich) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. vii. p. 94, 95.-very poor) Tarikh Schikard, (p. 144-150.) Texeira, (in Stevens, 1. i. c. 35.) Asseman, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 404-410.) and the Abbé Fourmont, (Hist. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, tom. vii. p. 325-334.) who has translated a spurious or genuine testament of Nushirvan.

2 A thousand years before his birth, the judges of Persia had given a solemn opinion--τῳ Βασιλεύοντι Περσέων εξείναι ποιειν το αν Bovλnta. (Herodot, I. iii, c. 31. p. 210. edit. Wesseling.) Nor had this constitutional maxim been neglected as a useless and barren theory.

с

curiosity of an ingenious people, and the light of science was diffused over the dominions of Persia. At Gondi Sapor, in the neighbourhood 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 favour, 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

h

a On the literary state of Persia, the Greek versions, philosophers, sophists, the learning or ignorance of Chosroes, Agathias (1. ii. c. 6671.) displays much information and strong prejudices.

b Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. DCCXLV. VI. VII.

e The Shah Nameh, or Book of Kings, is perhaps the original record of history which was translated into Greek by the interpreter Sergius, (Agathias, 1. v. p. 141.) preserved after the Mahometan conquest, and versified in the year 994, by the national poet Ferdoussi. See D'Anquetil (Mem. de l'Academie, tom. xxxi. p. 379.) and Sir William Jones. (Hist. of Nader Shah, p. 161.)

d In the fifth century, the name of Restom or Rostam, a hero who equalled the strength of twelve elephants, was familiar to the Armenians. (Moses Choronensis, Hist. Armen. 1. ii. c. 7. p. 96. edit. Whis. ton.) In the beginning of the seventh, the Persian Romance of Rostam and Isfendiar was applauded at Mecca. (Sale's Koran, c. xxxi. p. 335.) Yet this exposition of ludicrum novæ historiæ, is not given by Maracci. (Refutat. Alcoran. p. 544-548.)

e Procop. (Goth. I. iv. c. 10.) Kobad had a favourite Greek physi cian, Stephen of Edessa. (Persic. 1. ii. c. 26.) The practice was ancient; and Herodotus relates the adventures of Democedes of Crotona, 1. iii. c. 125-137.)

f See Pagi, tom. ii. p. 626. In one of the treaties an honourable article was inserted for the toleration and burial of the catholics. (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 142) Nushizad, a son of Nushirvan, was a christian, a rebel, and-a martyr? (D'Herbelot, p. 681.)

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 Phædrus, 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 pleasant 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.

A. D. 533-539.

The son of Kobad found his king- Peace and war dom involved in a war with the suc- with the Romans, cessor 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

g On the Persian language, and its three dialects, consult D'ADquetil (p. 339-343.) and Jones: (p. 153-185.) aypig Tivi Thatty kas αμουσοτατα, is the character which Agathias (1. ii. p. 66.) ascribes to an idiom renowned in the east for poetical softness.

h Agathias specifies the Gorgias, Phædon, Parmenides, and Timæns Renaudot (Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. xii. p. 246-261.) does not

mention this barbaric version of Aristotle.

iOf these fables, I have seen three copies in three different lan guages: 1. In Greek, translated by Simeon Seth (A. D. 1100.) from the Arabic, and published by Starck at Berlin in 1697, in 12mo. 2. ln Latin, a version from the Greek, Sapientia Indorum, inserted by Pere Poussin at the end of his edition of Pachymer, (p. 547-620. edit. Roman.) 3. In French, from the Turkish, dedicated, in 1540, to sultan Soliman. Contes et Fables Indiennes de Bidpai et de Lokman, par M. M. Galland et Cardonne, Paris, 1778. 3 vols. in 12mo. Mr. Warton (History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 129-131.) takes a larger

and ruins Anti

och.

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 reinforcement of six thousand soldiers; they disdained the offers of an easy capitulation; and their intemperate clamours 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 honourable exemption was granted to the church of St. Julian, and the quarter of the town where the ambassadors reside; 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,

r In the public history of Procopius; (Persic. 1. ii. c. 16. 18, 19, 20, 21. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28.) and, with some slight exceptions, we may rea

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 neighbourhood 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 recognised 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 Cæsars, 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. These hopes might have been realized, if the conqueror of Italy had not been seasonably recalled to the defence of the east. While Chosroes pursued his ambitious designs on the coast of the Euxine, Belisarius, at the head of an army without pay or discipline, encamped beyond the Euphrates, within six miles of Nisibis. He meditated, by a skilful operation, to draw the Persians from their impregnable citadel, and improving his advantage in the field, either to intercept their retreat, or perhaps to enter the gates with the flying barbarians. He advanced one day's journey on the territories of Persia, reduced the fortress of Sisaurane, and sent the governor, with eight hundred chosen horsemen, to serve the emperor in his Italian wars. He detached Arethas and his Árabs, supported by twelve hundred Romans, to pass the Tigris, and to ravage the harvests of Assyria, a fruitful province, long exempt from the calamities | of war. But the plans of Belisarius were disconcerted by the untractable spirit of Arethas, who neither returned to the camp, nor sent any intelligence of his motions. The Roman general was fixed in anxious expectation to the same spot; the time of action elapsed, the ardent son of Mesopotamia inflamed with fevers the blood of his European soldiers; and the stationary troops and officers of Syria affected to tremble for the safety of their

Defence of the east by Belisa

rius,

A. D. 541.

sonably shut our ears against the malevolent whisper of the Anecdotes, (c. 2, 3. with the Notes, as usual, of Alemannus.)