Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/639

EMPIRE.] PERSIA 611 to make Armenia a province, a change which was sup ported by a strong party among the Armenians themselves. But the Persian governors had as much trouble with barons and clergy as the old kings had had. Bahrdm, dying in 438 or 439, was succeeded by his son, Yazdegerd II., of whom little good can be said. He per- secuted both Jews and Christians, abolished the audiences on the first day of each month on which every man of posi tion could approach the king with petitions or complaints, and is recorded to have married his daughter (that, of course, was no crime in a Zoroastrian) and then murdered her. In 441 he very nearly came to war with Rome, but peace was concluded without further conflict than some harrying of the inarches, and it was provided (as in later and probably in earlier treaties) that no new fortresses should be erected on the border by either party. Yazdegerd was much in KhorAsAn, where he sustained repeated defeats from the Hephthalites ; and in 450/451 he had to deal with a serious rebellion in Armenia, mainly produced by persecution of the Christians, which was not quelled till he promised complete freedom of Christian worship. On the death of Yazdegerd II. (457) the throne was for two years contested between his two sons by Dinak 1 Hormizd, prince-governor of SagastAn, and Peroz. The latter, who was the younger, proved successful by aid of the Hephthalites and the energy of RahAm of the house of MihrAn, and put his brother and three others of the nearest royal kin to death. Per6z was again a persecutor of Jews and Christians, but had political wisdom enough to favour the reception of Nestorianism by his Christian subjects when that party was driven from the Roman empire. At the synod of Beth LApAt (483 or 484) the old Christian church of Persia adopted the Xestorian con fession, and was thus separated from Byzantium by a wide breach. But in truth Christianity in Persia had never been really much of a danger to the state. 2 The Hephthalites and Per6z soon fell out about the reward for their services, and fierce fighting ensued, in which Peroz gained several victories ; but the seat of war was a desert very unfavourable to his operations, and twice he had to make peace on disadvantageous terms, while at least once he was himself taken prisoner and released on heavy ransom, leaving his son KavAdh a hostage for its payment for the space of two years. But Peroz always broke faith again with the foe, and at length, in 484, he was among the missing after a terrible battle, in which his daughter was taken captive and placed in the harem of the Hephthalite king. The conquerors now overflowed Persia, which for a time was without a monarch till order was restored by Zarmihr, of the great house of KAren, who at the time of Peroz s death had been successfully dealing with a revolt in Armenia, and now hastened to the capital and made BalAsh, Peroz s brother, king. The Hephthalites seem to have been bought off by a yearly tribute. 3 BalAsh s brother, Zareh, who also claimed the crown, was vanquished and put to death. But the new king had little power, and secured the obedience of the Armenians only by granting that the Persian state religion should be wholly excluded from their land. The clemency of BalAsh is praised by the Syrians and Armenians, possibly for no other reason than that his relations with the Persian priesthood were unfriendly. Their enmity proved fatal to him ; his treasuries were empty, so that he could neither 1 Dinak s likeness is preserved on a gem ; see B. Born, in Compte- rendu de la Com. Arch, pour 1S78, 1879, 162 sq. (St Petersburg). 2 The Armenians, on the other hand, joined the Monophysites, who had a large party in the Roman empire and often had the upper hand there. 3 Persian tradition makes Sokhra (i.e., Zarmihr) humble the enemy and compel them to restore their booty. I gain a party among the nobles nor secure the support of 429-526. an army, and in 488 or 489 he was deposed and blinded. His nephew and successor, KavAdh I., son of Peroz, Kavadh found the land in a very disturbed state ; there were I- rebellions among the barbarous mountain tribes and there was another rising in Armenia. Now KavAdh was not disposed to be the humble servant of the priests and nobles to whom he owed the crown, and to humiliate them he played the dangerous game of encouraging Mazdak, the energetic priest of a new religion, which demanded in the name of justice that he who had a superfluity of goods and several wives should impart to those who had none. This theory was actually put in practice to some consider able extent, but then the nobility and clergy rose, deposed KavAdh, and imprisoned him in the " Castle of Oblivion," 4 placing his brother JAmAsp on the throne (c. 496). But KavAdh escaped to the Hephthalites, where he had once lived as a hostage, received in marriage the daughter of the king (whose mother was the captive sister of KavAdh), and with his help expelled JAmAsp and recovered his king dom (498 or 499). 5 KavAdh held severe judgment on the traitors, and it was probably at this time that he gave up Zarmihr into the hands of his most dangerous rival, ShApur of the house of MihrAn. He does not seem to have carried his Mazdakite experiment farther, and he had put the realm into fair order when he began a war with Rome. Between Rome and Persia there had been such a series of negotiations and compacts, none of which had been scrupulously observed, that either side could find a ca^us belli at will. KavAdh had the will, and in summer 502 he opened that era of hideous strife between Rome and Persia which so exhausted both powers as to pave the way for the new empire of the Arabs. In August he seized without a fight Theodosiopolis (Karin, Erzerum), capital of Roman Armenia. On 10th January 503 Amida fell after a siege of three months and was cruelly chastised for its resistance, tens of thousands of the inhabitants being put to the sword. The Romans acted with little energy or unity of plan, and in the course of the war Mesopotamia suffered terribly. Amida was restored to the Romans by compact, or rather by purchase, after a long siege in 504 ; and after much fighting a peace was concluded in the autumn of 506, leaving things as they were before the war. The Persians, we are told, were ready for peace because they had on their hands a war with the " Huns," a very vague word in the mouth of a Greek. But KavAdh must have been in considerable difficulty, for he tamely submitted to a gross breach of the treaty when Anastasius raised the village of Dara to a great fortress to hold Nisibis in check. There was no more war while Anastasius was emperor, but Justin I. (518-527) seems to have ceased the payment for the Caucasian Gates again stipulated in the peace of 506, to which KavAdh replied by letting loose his Arabs on the empire, and the Romans retaliated by forays in Persian Armenia. There were also serious disputes about the suzerainty of the lands between Caucasus and Pontus, but KavAdh was still anxious to avert war, from which pre sumably he saw that no permanent advantage could flow. At the same time he was very eager to secure the succes sion for his favourite son, Khosrau, who was not his eldest ; and he thought that if he could induce the emperor to adopt Khosrau as his own son this would form a sort of guarantee and greatly impress the Persians. A nego- 4 Identified by Sir H. Rawlinson as Gilgerd in northern Susiana. 5 Kavadh s escape and restoration seem to have been favoured by some of the greatest nobles, and Persian tradition, which, however, is very confused in this whole chapter, makes Zarmihr the companion of his flight. 6 Of this war we have good accounts in contemporary Syriac sources.