Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 173
emperor, becoming thus the contemporary of the great
law-maker Justinian. Nushirwan is still the synonym in
the mouth of every Persian for wisdom, justice and munificence,
and could we forget his constant perfidy, an
evil quality about which his subjects are not supposed
to have cared much, he well deserved a reputatiDn, which
even partial historians have not perhaps rated too
highly. He found his empire groaning under every kind
of abuse, among the worst being the prevalence of a
sect, who, under their leader Mazdac, held the doctrine
of community of women, with other practices which, in
recent years, have made Mormonism intolerable, even
in the far West. From the evil results of the doctrines
promulgated by this vagabond, Nushirwan gradually
relieved his subjects, rooting out the delusion by the
simple process of destroying the prophet and his
followers. He then restored the bridges, rebuilt towns
and villages which had fallen into decay, and held out
such encouragement to men of learning, that even the
philosophers of Greece flocked to his Court. The
literature of Greece and Rome were collected by his
diligence ; Aristotle and Plato translated into Persian ;
and portions of what we now know to have been
originally in Sanskrit, as the so-called " Fables of Pilpay,"
or " Hito-pade"sa," were brought from India.
In his first war with Justinian, Nushirwan maintained
his superiority by the extortion from the humbled em-
peror of eleven thousand pounds of gold l
, as the price of
A is proposal said to have been made in h-s youth, that he should be
r.dopted by the Emperor Justin; and, that ha was baptized as a
Christian a little before his death, is another story about which there
is more than doubt.
1 The peace so disgracefully purchased from the Persians, enabled