and Chosroes was persuaded to renounce his dangerous claim to the possession or sovereignty of Colchos and its dependent states. Rich in the accumulated treasures of the East, he extorted from the Romans an annual payment of thirty thousand pieces of gold; and the smallness of the sum revealed the disgrace of a tribute in its naked deformity. In a previous debate, the chariot of Sesostris and the wheel of fortune were applied by one of the ministers of Justinian, who observed that the reduction of Antioch and some Syrian cities had elevated beyond measure the vain and ambitious spirit of the Barbarian. "You are mistaken," replied the modest Persian: "the king of kings, the lord of mankind, looks down with contempt on such petty acquisitions; and of the ten nations, vanquished by his invincible arms, he esteems the Romans as the least formidable."[1] According to the Orientals the empire of Nushirvan extended from Ferganah in Transoxiana to Yemen or Arabia Felix. He subdued the rebels of Hyrcania, reduced the provinces of Cabul and Zablestan on the banks of the Indus, broke the power of the Euthalites, terminated by an honourable treaty the Turkish war, and admitted the daughter of the great khan into the number of his lawful wives. Victorious and respected among the princes of Asia, he gave audience, in his palace of Madain, or Ctesiphon, to the ambassadors of the world. Their gifts or tributes, arms, rich garments, gems, slaves, or aromatics, were humbly presented at the foot of his throne; and he condescended to accept from the king of India ten quintals of the wood of aloes, a maid seven cubits in height, and a carpet softer than silk, the skin, as it was reported, of an extraordinary serpent.[2]
Conquest of the Abyssinians. A.D. 522 Justinian had been reproached for his alliance with the Æthiopians, as if he attempted to introduce a people of savage negroes into the system of civilized society. But the friends of the Roman empire, the Axumites, or Abyssinians, may be always distinguished from the original natives of Africa.[3] The- ↑ The negotiations and treaties between Justinian and Chosroes are copiously explained by Procopius (Persic. l. ii. c. 10, 13, 26, 27, 28. Gothic. l. ii. c. 11, 15), Agathias (l. iv. p. 141, 142), and Menander (in excerpt. Legat. p. 132-147). Consult Barbeyrac, Hist. des Anciens Traites, tom. ii. p. 154, 181-184, 193-200.
- ↑ D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 680, 681, 294, 295.
- ↑ See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 449. This Arab cast of features and complexion, which has continued 3400 years (Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Æthiopic. l. i. c. 4) in the colony of Abyssinia, will justify the suspicion that race, as well as climate, must have contributed to form the negroes of the adjacent and similar regions.
