camp at the foot of mount Caucasus. As their destruction or their success must be alike advantageous to the empire, he persuaded them to invade the enemies of Rome; and they were easily tempted, by gifts and promises, to gratify their ruling inclinations. These fugitives who fled before the Turkish arms passed the Tanais and Borysthenes, and boldly advanced into the heart of Poland and Germany, violating the law of nations and abusing the rights of victory. Before ten years had elapsed, their camps were seated on the Danube and the Elbe, many Bulgarian and Sclavonian names were obliterated from the earth, and the remainder of their tribes are found as tributaries and vassals under the standard of the Avars. The chagan, the peculiar title of their king, still affected to cultivate the friendship of the emperor; and Justinian entertained some thoughts of fixing them in Pannonia to balance the prevailing power of the Lombards. But the virtue or treachery of an Avar betrayed the secret enmity and ambitious designs of their countrymen; and they loudly complained of the timid though jealous policy of detaining their ambassadors, and denying the arms which they had been allowed to purchase in the capital of the empire.[1]
Embassies the Turks and Romans. A.D. 569-582 Perhaps the apparent change in the dispositions of the emperors may be ascribed to the embassy which was received from the conquerors of the Avars.[2] The immense distance which eluded their arms could not extinguish their resentment: the Turkish ambassadors pursued the footsteps of the vanquished to the Jaik, the Volga, mount Caucasus, the Euxine, and Constantinople, and at length appeared before the successor of Constantine, to request that he would not espouse the cause of rebels and fugitives. Even commerce had some share in this remarkable negotiation; and the Sogdoites, who were now the tributaries of the Turks, embraced the fair occasion of opening, by the north of the Caspian, a new road for the importation of Chinese silk into the Roman empire. The Persian, who pre-- ↑ The embassies and first conquests of the Avars may be read in Menander (Excerpt. Legat. p. 99, 100, 101, 154, 155 [frs. 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 28, ed. Müller, F. H. G. iv.]), Theophanes (p. 196), the Historia Miscella (l. xvi. p. 109), and Gregory of Tours (l. iv. c. 23, 29, in the Historians of France, tom. ii. p. 214, 217). [Cf. Malalas, p. 489; Cramer, Anecd. Par., 2, p. 114. Theophanes probably derived his notion from the full Malalas.]
- ↑ Theophanes (Chron. p. 204) and the Hist. Miscella (l. xvi. p. 110), as understood by De Guignes (tom. i. part ii. p. 354), appear to speak of a Turkish embassy to Justinian himself; but that of Maniach, in the fourth year of his successor Justin, is positively the first that reached Constantinople (Menander, p. 108 [fr. 18, p. 226, ed. Müller]). [The passage in Theophanes records the embassy of the unknown Hermechionites.]
