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conquests had been stretched from the Caspian to the heart of India, whose throne was enriched with emeralds,18% and whose cavalry was supported by a line of two thousand elephants.134 The Persians * were twice circumvented, in a situation which made valor useless and flight impossible; and the double victory of the Huns was achieved by military stratagem. They dismissed their royal captive after he had submitted to adore the majesty of a Barbarian; and the humiliation was poorly evaded by the casuistical subtlety of the Magi, who instructed Perozes to direct his attention to the rising sun. The indignant successor of Cyrus forgot his danger and his gratitude; he renewed the attack with headstrong fury, and lost both his army and life.15 The death of Perozes abandoned Persia to her foreign and domestic enemies; and twelve years of confusion elapsed before his son Cabades, or Kobad, could embrace any designs of ambition or revenge. The unkind parsimony of Anastasius was the motive or pretence of a Roman the Huns and Arabs marched under the Persian standard, and the fortifications of Armenia and Mesopotamia were, at that time, in a ruinous or imperfect condition. The emperor returned his thanks to the governor and people of Martyropolis for the prompt surrender of a city which could not be successfully defended, and the conflagration of

war;

136

133 They were purchased from the merchants of Adulis who traded to India (Cosmas, Topograph. Christ. 1. xi. p. 339): yet in the estimate of precious stones, the Scythian emerald was the first, the Bactrian the second, the Ethiopian only the third (Hill's Theophrastus, pp. 61, &c., 02). The production, mines, &c., of emeralds, are involved in darkness; and it is doubtful whether we possess any of the twelve sorts known to the ancients (Goguet, Origine des Loix, &c., part ii. 1. ii. c. 2, art. 3). In this war the Huns got, or at least l'erozes lost, the finest pearl in the world, of which Procopius relates a ridiculous fable.

134 The Indo-Scythe continued to reign from the time of Augustus (Dionys. Perieget. 1088, with the Commentary of Eustathius, in Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. iv.) to that of the elder Justin (Cosmas. Topograph. Christ. 1. xi. pp. 338, 339). On their origin and conquests, see D'Anville (sur l'Inde, pp. 18, 45, &c., 69, 85, 89). In the second century they were masters of Larice or Guzerat.

135 See the fate of Phirouz, or Perozes, and its consequences, in Procopius (Persic. l. i. c. 3-6), who may be compared with the fragments of Oriental history (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 351, and Texeira, History of Persia, translated or abridged by Stephens, 1. i. c. 32, pp. 132-138). The chronology is ably ascertained by Asseman. (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. pp. 396-327).

136 The Persian war, under the reigns of Anastasius and Justin, may be col lected from Procopius (Persic. 1. i. c. 7, 8, 9), Theophanes (in Chronograph. pp. 121-127), Evagrius (1. iii. c. 37), Marcellinus (in Chron. p. 47), and Josua Stylites (apud Asseman. tom. i. pp. 272-281).

According to the Persian historians, he was misled by guides who used the old stratagem of Zopyrus. Malcolm, vol. i. p. 101.-M.

t In the MS. Chronicle of Tabary, it is said that the Moubedan Mobed, or Grand Pontiff, opposed with all his influence the violation of the treaty. St. Martin, vol. vii. p. 254.-M.

When Firoze advanced, Khoosh-Nuaz (the king of the Huns) presented on the point of a lance the treaty to which he had sworn, and exhorted him yet to desist before he destroyed his fame forever. Malcolm, vol. i. p. 103.-M.

*

on the

Theodosiopolis might justify the conduct of their prudent neighbors. Amida sustained a long and destructive siege : at the end of three months the loss of fifty thousand of the soldiers of Cabades was not balanced by any prospect of success, and it was in vain that the Magi deduced a flattering prediction from the indecency of the women ramparts, who had revealed their most secret charms to the eyes of the assailants. At length, in a silent night, they ascended the most accessible tower, which was guarded only by some monks oppressed, after the duties of a festival, with sleep and wine. Scaling-ladders were applied at the dawn of day: the presence of Cabades, his stern command, and his drawn sword, compelled the Persians to vanquish; and before it was sheathed, fourscore thousand of the inhabitants had expiated the blood of their companions. After the siege of Amida, the war continued three years, and the unhappy frontier tasted the full measure of its calamities. The gold of Anastasius was offered too late, the number of his troops was defeated by the number of their generals; the country was stripped of its inhabitants, and both the living and the dead were abandoned to the wild beasts of the desert. The resistance of Edessa, and the deficiency of spoil, inclined the mind of Cabades to peace: he sold his conquests for an exorbitant price; and the same line, though marked with slaughter and devastation, still separated the two empires. To avert the repetition of the same evils, Anastasius resolved to found a new colony, so strong, that it should defy the power of the Persian, so far advanced towards Assyria, that its stationary troops might defend the province by the menace or operation of offensive war. For this purpose, the town of Dara,187 fourteen miles from Nisibis, and four days' journey from the Tigris, was peopled and adorned; the hasty works of Anastasius were improved by the perseverance of Justinian; and, without insisting on places less important, the fortifications of Dara may represent the military architecture of the age. The city was surrounded with two walls, and the interval between them, of fifty paces, afforded a retreat to the cattle of the besieged. The inner wall was a monument of strength and beauty: it

187 The description of Dara is amply and correctly given by Procopius (Persic. 1. i. c. 10, 1. ii. c. 13. De Edific. 1. ii. c. 1, 2, 3, 1. iii. c. 5). See the situation in D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, pp. 53, 54, 55), though he seems to double the interval between Dara and Nisibis.

* Gibbon should have written "some prostitutes.' Proc Pers. vol. i. p. 7.

-M.

measured sixty feet from the ground, and the height of the towers was one hundred feet; the loopholes, from whence an enemy might be annoyed with missile weapons, were small, but numerous; the soldiers were planted along the rampart, under the shelter of double galleries, and a third platform, spacious and secure, was raised on the summit of the towers. The exterior wall appears to have been less lofty, but more solid; and each tower was protected by a quadrangular bulwark. A hard, rocky soil resisted the tools of the miners, and on the south-east, where the ground was more tractable, their approach was retarded by a new work which advanced in the shape of a half-moon. The double and treble ditches were filled with a stream of water; and, in the management of the river, the most skilful labor was employed to supply the inhabitants, to distress the besiegers, and to prevent the mischiefs of a natural or artificial inundation. Dara continued more than sixty years to fulfil the wishes of its founders, and to provoke the jealousy of the Persians, who incessantly complained, that this impregnable fortress had been constructed in manifest violation of the treaty of peace between the two empires.*

Between the Euxine and the Caspian, the countries of Colchos, Iberia, and Albania, are intersected in every direc tion by the branches of Mount Caucasus; and the two principal gates, or passes, from north to south, have been frequently confounded in the geography both of the ancients and moderns. The name of Caspian or Albanian gates is properly applied to Derbend, 188 which occupies a short

138 For the city and pass of Derbend, see D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. pp. 157, 291, 807), Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Gengiscan, 1. iv. c. 9), Histoire Généalogique des Tatars (tom. i. p. 120), Olearius (Voyage en Perse, pp. 1039–1041), and Corneille le Bruyn (Voyages tom. i. pp. 146, 147); his view may be compared with the plan of Olearius, who judges the wall to be of shells and gravel hardened by time.

*The situation (of Dara) does not appear to give it strength, as it must have been commanded on three sides by the mountains, but opening on the south to wards the plains of Mesopotamia. The foundation of the walls and towers, built of large hewn stone, may be traced across the valley, and over a number of low rocky hills which branch out from the foot of Mount Masius. The circumference I conceive to be nearly two miles and a half, and a small stream, which flows through the middle of the place, has induced several Koordish and Armenian families to fix their residence within the ruins. Besides the walls and towers, the remains of many other buildings attest the former grandeur of Dara; a considerable part of the space within the walls is arched and vaulted underneath, and in one place we perceived a large cavern, supported by four ponderous columns, somewhat resembling the great cistern of Constantinople. In the centre of the village are the ruins of a palace (probably that mentioned by Procopins) or church, one hundred paces in length, and sixty in breadth. The foundations, which are quite entire, consist of a prodigious number of subterraneous vaulted chambers, entered by a narrow passage forty paces in length. The gate is still standing: a considerable part of the wall has bid defiance to time, "&c. M'Donald Kinneir's Journey, p. 438.-M.

declivity between the mountains and the sea: the city, if we give credit to local tradition, had been founded by the Greeks; and this dangerous entrance was fortified by the kings of Persia with a mole, double walls, and doors of iron. The Iberian gates 139 * are formed by a narrow passage of six miles in Mount Caucasus, which opens from the northern side of Iberia, or Georgia, into the plain that reaches to the Tanais and the Volga. A fortress, designed by Alexander, perhaps, or one of his successors, to command that important pass, had descended by right of conquest or inheritance to a prince of the Huns, who offered it for a moderate price to the emperor: but while Anastasius paused, while he timorously computed the cost and the distance, a more vigilant rival interposed, and Cabades forcibly occupied the Straits of Caucasus. The Albanian and Iberian gates excluded the horsemen of Scythia from the shortest and most practicable roads, and the whole front of the mountains was covered by the rampart of Gog and Magcg, the long wall which has excited the curiosity of an Arabian caliph 140 and a Russian conqueror.141 According to a recent description, huge stones, seven feet thick, twenty-one feet in length or height, are artificially joined without iron or cement, to compose a wall, which runs above three hundred miles from the shores of Derbend, over the hills, and through the valleys of Daghestan and Georgia. Without a vision, such a work might be undertaken by the policy of Cabades ; without a miracle, it might be accomplished by his son, so formidable to the Romans, under the name of Chosroes; so dear to the Orientals, under the appellation of Nushirwan.

139 Procopius, though with some confusion, always denominates them Caspian (Persic. 1. i. c. 10). The pass is now styled Tartar-topa, the Tartar-gates (D'Anville Géographie Ancienne, tom. ii. pp. 119, 120).

140 The imaginary rampart of Gog and Magog, which was seriously explored and believed by a caliph of the ninth century, appears to be derived from the gates of Mount Caucasus, and a vague report of the wall of China (Geograph. Nubiensis, pp. 267-270. Mémoires de l'Académie, tom. xxxi. pp. 210-219).

141 See a learned dissertation of Baier, de muro Caucaseo, in Comment. Acad. Petropol. ann. 1726. tom. i. pp. 425-463; but it is destitute of a map or plan, When the czar Peter I. became master of Derbend in the year 1722, the measure of the wall was found to be 3285 Russian orgyiæ, or fathom, each of seven feet English; in the whole somewhat more than four miles in length.

Malte-Brun, tom. viii. p. 12, makes three passes: 1. The central, which leads from Mosdok to Teflis, the rúλat KaνKáσiai. 2. The Albanian, moré inland than the Derbend Pass. 3. The Derbend-the Caspian Gates. But the narrative of Col. Monteith, in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London, vol. iii. p.i. p. 39, clearly shows that there are but two passes between the Black Sea and the Caspian; the central, the Caucasian, or, as Col. Monteith calls it, the Caspian Gates, and the pass of Derbend, though it is practicable to turn this posi tion (of Derbend) by a road a few miles distant through the mountains, p. 40 -M.

VOL. III.-30

The Persian monarch held in his hand the keys both of peace and war; but he stipulated, in every treaty, that Justinian should contribute to the expense of a common barrier, which equally protected the two empires from the inroads of the Scythians.142

VII. Justinian suppressed the schools of Athens and the consulship of Rome, which had given so many sages and heroes to mankind. Both these institutions had long since degenerated from their primitive glory; yet some reproach may be justly inflicted on the avarice and jealousy of a prince, by whose hand such venerable ruins were destroyed.

Athens, after her Persian triumphs, adopted the philosophy of Ionia and the rhetoric of Sicily; and these studies became the patrimony of a city, whose inhabitants, about thirty thousand males, condensed, within the period of a single life, the genius of ages and millions. Our sense of the dignity of human nature is exalted by the simple recollection, that Isocrates 143 was the companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the first representations of the Edipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides; and that his pupils Eschines and Demosthenes contended for the crown of patriotism in the presence of Aristotle, the master of Theophrastus, who taught at Athens with the founders of the Stoic and Epicurean sects.144 The ingenuous youth of Attica enjoyed the benefits of their domestic education, which was communicated without envy to the rival cities. Two thousand disciples heard the lessons of Theophrastus; 145 the schools of rhetoric must have been still more populous than those of philosophy; and a rapid succession of students diffused the fame of their teachers as far as the utmost limits of the Grecian language and name. Those limits were enlarged by the victories of Alexander; the arts of Athens survived her freedom and dominion; and the Greek colonies which the Macedonians planted in Egypt, and scattered over Asia, undertook long and frequent pil

142 See the fortifications and treaties of Chosroes, or Nushirwan, in Procopius (Persic. 1. i. c. 16, 22, 1. ii.) and D'Herbelot (p. 682).

143 The life of Isocrates extends from Olymp. lxxxvi. 1, to cx. 3, (ante Christ. 436-438). See Dionys. Halicarn. tom. ii. pp. 149, 150, edit. Hudson. Plutarch (sive anonymus) in Vit. X. Oratorum, pp. 1538-1513, edit. H. Steph. Phot. cod. cclix. p. 1453.

44 The schools of Athens are copiously though concisely represented in the Fortuna Attica of Meursius (c. viii. pp. 59-73, in tom. i. Opp.). For the state and arts of the city, see the first book of Pausanias, and a small tract of Dicearchus (in the second volume of Hudson's Geographers), who wrote about Olymp. cxvii Dodwell's Dissertat, sect. 4).

146 Diogen. Laert. de Vit. Philosoph. 1. v. segm. 37, p. 289.

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