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.[1]
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 question 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?[2] 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.[3] At Gondi Sapor,[4] in the neighbourhood of the royal city of Susa, an academy of physic was founded, which insensibly became a liberal school of poetry, philosopliy, and rhetoric.[5] The annals of the monarchy[6] were composed; and, while recent and au-
- ↑ The character and government of Nushirvan is represented sometimes in the words of d'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 680, &c. from Khondemir), Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 179, 180 — very rich), Abulpharagius (Dynast. vii. p. 94, 95 — very poor), Tarikh Shikard (p. 144-150), Texeira (in Stevens, l. 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. [Also Tabari (ed. Nöldeke, p. 251 sqq.). For an account of the domestic government of Chosroes see Rawlinson's Seventh Oriental Monarchy.]
- ↑ A thousand years before his birth, the judges of Persia had given a solemn opinion τῷ βασιλεύοντι Περσέων ἐξεɩ̂ναι ποιέειν τὸ ἂν βούληται (Herodot. l. iii. c. 31, p. 210, edit. Wesseling). Nor had this constitutional maxim been neglected as an useless and barren theory.
- ↑ On the literary state of Persia, the Greek versions, philosophers, sophists, the learning or ignorance of Chosroes, Agathias (l. ii. c. 66-71) displays much information and strong prejudices.
- ↑ [For this town (to be sought in the ruins of Shāhābad) see Nöldeke, op. cit. 41-2. It was the capital of Susiana.]
- ↑ Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. DCCLXV. vi. vii.
- ↑ The Shah Nameh, or book of Kings, is perhaps the original record of history which was translated into Greek by the interpreter Sergius (Agathias, l. v. p. 141), preserved after the Mahometan conquest, and versified in the year 994, by the national poet Ferdoussi. See d'Anquetil (Mém. de l'Académie, tom. xxxi. p. 379),
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. 416).
