wives and children of Narses were protected from violence and rapine, conveyed to a place of safety, and treated with every mark of respect and tenderness, that was due from a generous enemy, to their age, their sex, and their royal dignity.*

While the east anxiously expected the decision of this great contest, the emperor having assembled in Syria a strong army of observation, displayed from a distance the resources of the Roman power, and reserved himself for any future emergency of the war. On the intelligence of the victory, he condescended to advance towards the frontier, with a view of moderating, by his presence and counsels, the pride of Galerius. The interview of the Roman princes at Nisibis was accompanied with every expression of respect on one side, and of esteem on the other. It was in that city that they soon afterwards gave audience to the ambassador of the great king.† The power, or at least the spirit of Narses, had been broken by his last defeat; and he considered an immediate peace as the only means that could stop the progress of the Roman arms. He dispatched Apharban, a servant who possessed his favour and confidence, with a commission to negotiate a treaty, or rather to receive whatever conditions the conquerors should impose. Apharban opened the conference by expressing his master's gratitude for the generous treatment of his family, and by soliciting the liberty of those illustrious captives. He celebrated the valour of Galerius, without degrading the reputation of Narses, and thought it no dishonour to confess the superiority of the victorious Cæsar, over a monarch who had surpassed in glory all the princes of his race. Notwithstanding the justice of the Persian cause, he was empowered to submit the present differences to the decision of the emperors themselves; convinced as he was, that, in the midst of prosperity, they would not be unmindful of the vicissitudes of fortune. Apharban concluded his discourse in the style of eastern allegory, by observing that the

saccum some read scutum. *The Persians confessed the Roman superiority in morals as well as in arms. Eutrop. 2, 24. But this respect and gratitude of enemies is very seldom to be found in their own accounts. The account of the negotiation is taken from the fragments of Peter the patrician, in the Excerpta Legationum, published in the Byzantine Collection. Peter lived under Justinian; but it is

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[CH. XIII. Roman and Persian monarchies were the two eyes of the world, which would remain imperfect and mutilated if either of them should be put out.

It well becomes the Persians (replied Galerius, with a transport of fury which seemed to convulse his whole frame), it well becomes the Persians to expatiate on the vicissitudes of fortune, and calmly to read us lectures on the virtues of moderation. Let them remember their own moderation towards the unhappy Valerian. They vanquished him by fraud, they treated him with indignity. They detained him till the last moment of his life in shameful captivity, and after his death they exposed his body to perperpetual ignominy. Softening, however, his tone, Galerius insinuated to the ambassador, that it had never been the practice of the Romans to trample on a prostrate enemy; and that, on this occasion, they should consult their own dignity rather than the Persian merit. He dismissed Apharban with a hope, that Narses would soon be informed on what conditions he might obtain, from the clemency of the emperors, a lasting peace, and the restoration of his wives and children. In this conference we may discover the fierce passions of Galerius, as well as his deference to the superior wisdom and authority of Diocletian. The ambition of the former grasped at the conquest of the east, and proposed to reduce Persia into the state of a province. The prudence of the latter, who adhered to the moderate policy of Augustus and the Antonines, embraced the favourable opportunity of terminating a successful war by an honourable and advantageous peace.

*

As

In pursuance of their promise, the emperors soon afterward appointed Sicorius Probus, one of their secretaries, to acquaint the Persian court with their final resolution. the minister of peace, he was received with every mark of politeness and friendship; but under the pretence of allowing him the necessary repose after so long a journey, the audience of Probus was deferred from day to day; and he attended the slow motions of the king, till at length he was admitted to his presence, near the river Asprudus in Media. The secret motive of Narses, in this delay, had been to colvery evident, by the nature of his materials, that they are drawn from the most authentic and respectable writers. * Adeo Victor (says Aurelius) ut ni Valerius, cujus nutu omnia gerebantur, abnuisset, Ro

lect such a military force as might enable him, though sincerely desirous of peace, to negotiate with the greater weight and dignity. Three persons only assisted at this important conference, the minister Apharban, the prefect of the guards, and an officer who had commanded on the Armenian frontier.* The first condition proposed by the ambassador, is not at present of a very intelligible nature; and the city of Nisibis might be established for the place of mutual exchange, or, as we should formerly have termed it, for the staple of trade between the two empires. There is no difficulty in conceiving the intention of the Roman princes to improve their revenue by some restraints upon commerce; but as Nisibis was situated within their own dominions, and as they were masters both of the imports and exports, it should seem that such restraints were the objects of an internal law, rather than of a foreign treaty. To render them more effectual, some stipulations were probably required on the side of the king of Persia, which appeared so very repugnant either to his interest or to his dignity, that Narses could not be persuaded to subscribe them. As this was the only article to which he refused his consent, it was no longer insisted on; and the emperors either suffered the trade to flow in its natural channels, or contented themselves with such restrictions as it depended on their own authority to establish.

As soon as this difficulty was removed, a solemn peace was concluded and ratified between the two nations. The conditions of a treaty, so glorious to the empire, and so necessary to Persia, may deserve a more peculiar attention, as the history of Rome presents very few transactions of a similar nature; most of her wars having either been terminated by absolute conquest, or waged against barbarians ignorant of the use of letters. I. The Aboras, or, as it is called by Xenophon, the Araxes, was fixed as the boundary between the two monarchies. That river, which rose near the Tigris, was increased, a few miles below Nisibis, by the mani fasces in provinciam novam ferrentur. Verum pars terrarum tamen nobis utilior quæsita. *He had been governor of Sumium. (Pet. Patricius, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 30.) This province secms to be mentioned by Moses of Chorene (Geograph. p. 360), and lay to the east of mount Ararat. By an error of the geographer Ptolemy, the position of Singara is removed from the Aboras to the Tigris, which may have produced the mistake of Peter, in assigning the latter river for the boundary, instead of the former. The line of the Roman fron

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[сн. хIII little stream of the Mygdonius, passed under the walls of Singara, and fell into the Euphrates at Circesium, a frontier town, which, by the care of Diocletian, was very strongly fortified.* Mesopotamia, the object of so many wars, was ceded to the empire; and the Persians, by this treaty, renounced all pretensions to that great province. II. They relinquished to the Romans five provinces beyond the Tigris.t Their situation formed a very useful barrier, and their natural strength was soon improved by art and military skill. Four of these, to the north of the river, were districts of obscure fame and inconsiderable extent; Intiline, Zabdicene, Arzanene, and Moxoene: but on the east of the Tigris, the empire acquired the large and mountainous territory of Carduene, the ancient seat of the Carduchians, who preserved for many ages their manly freedom in the heart of the despotic monarchies of Asia. The ten thousand Greeks traversed their country, after a painful march, or rather engagement, of seven days; and it is confessed by their leader, in his incomparable relation of the retreat, that

66

tier traversed, but never followed, the course of the Tigris. [M. Guizot has here pointed out some errors of Gibbon; but his corrections are superseded by the more accurate information which Mr. Layard has just furnished in his latest work on Nineveh and Babylon. There are two branches of the Aboras, or more properly Chaboras; the western, or true Khabour," rises near Ras-el-Ain (i. e., the head of the spring), and is joined, near the volcanic hill of Koucab, by the eastern, formerly the Mygdonius, now the Jerujer, on a tributary stream of which stands Nisibir, the Nisibis of antiquity (p. 234 and 308). Xenophon did not cross this river. The ruins of Sinjar, believed to be the Singara of the Romans (p. 249), are far to the eastward, separated from all these streams by the mountain ridge of Belled Singar. There is another Khabour (p. 61) which falls into the Tigris from the east, and which Xenophon must have passed, but does not mention. D'Anville wrongly supposed it to be the Centritis; this was the name of the eastern Tigris, formed by the united waters of the Bitlis, Sert, and Bahtan (p. 63). The Araxes of Xenophon is the well known river which flows into the Caspian sea, and is now designated the Arras (p. 15).-ED.] * Procopius de Edificiis, lib. 2. c. 6. + Three of the provinces, Zabdicene, Arzanene, and Carduene, are allowed on all sides. But instead of the other two, Peter (in Excerpt. Leg. p. 30) inserts Rehimene and Sophene. I have preferred Ammianus (1. 26, 7), because it might be proved, that Sophene was never in the hands of the Persians, either before the reign of Diocletian, or after that of Jovian. For want of correct maps, like those of M. d'Anville, almost all the moderns, with Tillemont and Valesius at their head, have imagined that it was in respect to Persia, and not to Rome, that the five provinces were situate beyond the Tigris.

they suffered more from the arrows of the Carduchians, than from the power of the great king. Their posterity, the Curds, with very little alteration either of name or manners, acknowledged the nominal sovereignty of the Turkish sultan. III. It is almost needless to observe, that Tiridates, the faithful ally of Rome, was restored to the throne of his fathers, and that the rights of the imperial supremacy were fully asserted and secured. The limits of Armenia were extended as far as the fortress of Sintha in Media, and this increase of dominion was not so much an act of liberality as of justice. Of the provinces already mentioned beyond the Tigris, the four first had been dismembered by the Parthians from the crown of Armenia;† and when the Romans acquired the possession of them, they stipulated, at the expense of the usurpers, an ample compensation, which invested their ally with the extensive and fertile country of Atropatene. Its principal city, in the same situation perhaps as the modern Tauris, was frequently honoured with the residence of Tiridates; and as it sometimes bore the name of Ecbatana, he imitated, in the buildings and fortifications, the splendid capital of the Medes. IV. The country of Iberia was barren, its inhabitants rude and savage: but they were accustomed to the use of arms, and they separated from the empire barbarians. much fiercer and more formidable than themselves. The narrow defiles of mount Caucasus were in their hands, and it was in their choice, either to admit or to exclude the wandering tribes of Sarmatia, whenever a rapacious spirit. urged them to penetrate into the richer climes of the south.§ The nomination of the kings of Iberia, which was resigned by the Persian monarch to the emperors, contributed to the strength and security of the Roman power in Asia. The

* Xenophon's Anabasis, lib. 4. Their bows were three cubits in length, their arrows two; they rolled down stones that were each a waggon-load. The Greeks found a great many villages in that rude country. According to Eutropius (6, 9, as the text is represented by the best MSS.) the city of Tigranocerta was in Arzanene. The names and situation of the other three may be faintly traced.

Compare Herodotus, lib. 1, c. 97, with Moses Chorenens. Hist. Armen. lib. 2, c. 84, and the map of Armenia given by his editors. § Hiberi, locorum potentes, Caspia viâ Sarmatam in Armenios raptim effundunt. Tacit. Annal. 6, 64. See Strabon. Geograph. lib. 11. p. 764. Peter Patricius (in Excerpt: Leg. p. 30) is the only writer who YOL. I. 2 G