Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/35

This page needs to be proofread.

in the early years of his reign Cavades found himself greatly hampered by the arrogant pretensions of his nobles, wherefore he lent a favourable ear to the new propaganda, and gave public encouragement to Mazdak. But the power of the throne was unequal for the achievement of such a revolution; the Magi and the nobles met in council, deposed Cavades, and, with some hesitation conceding to him his life, caused him to be imprisoned in a stronghold called the Castle of Oblivion. From this durance he was shortly released through the devotion of a handsome sister-wife, who seduced the fidelity of the gaoler by the promise of her person. Being allowed to sleep for one night in her brother's apartment, she had him carried out next morning enrolled in her bed-furniture, for the exemption of which from inspection she invented a plausible excuse.^[1] Cavades now made good his escape to Bactria, where he spent a couple of years as a guest of the King of the Hephthalites. Ultimately he obtained the loan of an army from that monarch,^[2]

↑ Nöldeke, op. cit., p. 145; Zotenberg, op. cit., ii, 148. They were soiled by her menstrual flux, she said. To touch anything of the kind would have subjected him to a ceremony of purification and, perhaps, a flogging; Vendidâd, xviii, 5. The scene reminds us of that in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Falstaff is carried out in the foul-clothes basket. Procopius relates that she changed clothes with him, and the Shah walked out disguised as a woman; De Bel. Pers., i, 6.
↑ This was not his first sojourn with the Hephthalites. His father Peroz, who ultimately perished in a battle with these Huns, had left him in Bactria as a hostage for the payment of an indemnity. In Tabari the story goes that on his journey thither he stopped incognito at the house of a noble (N.) or peasant (Z.), where he was accommodated with a daughter of the family as an informal wife. When Balâsh was dethroned (see p. 379), he returned to take up the succession by the same route and found that the girl had become the mother of a boy, the same who was afterwards known as Chosroes, his favourite son (see p. 314).

[1] Nöldeke, op. cit., p. 145; Zotenberg, op. cit., ii, 148. They were soiled by her menstrual flux, she said. To touch anything of the kind would have subjected him to a ceremony of purification and, perhaps, a flogging; Vendidâd, xviii, 5. The scene reminds us of that in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Falstaff is carried out in the foul-clothes basket. Procopius relates that she changed clothes with him, and the Shah walked out disguised as a woman; De Bel. Pers., i, 6.

[2] This was not his first sojourn with the Hephthalites. His father Peroz, who ultimately perished in a battle with these Huns, had left him in Bactria as a hostage for the payment of an indemnity. In Tabari the story goes that on his journey thither he stopped incognito at the house of a noble (N.) or peasant (Z.), where he was accommodated with a daughter of the family as an informal wife. When Balâsh was dethroned (see p. 379), he returned to take up the succession by the same route and found that the girl had become the mother of a boy, the same who was afterwards known as Chosroes, his favourite son (see p. 314).

[1]

[2]