Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

174 HISTORy OF PERSIA.
a ! perpetual peace and, in his later reduction of Antioch
and Syria (A.D. 540), and in the extension of the Persian
territories from the banks of the Phasis to the Medi-
terranean, and from the Red Sea to the Oxus and
Jaxartes, we see abundant proof of his military genius,
or of the weakness of the Romans. One great general
alone withstood his further progress, and the veteran
Belisarius, recalled from his Western victories, twice
arrested his onward advance thus ; achieving a success
which, considering the scant means at his disposal and
the character of the Court he served, must be considered
remarkable.
In all the negotiations which took place be-
tween Justinian and Nushirwan, the latter invariably
assumed the tone of a superior, nor, though his
reign extended to nearly forty-eight years, and his life
to more than eighty, do we find his head turned by
this unusual prosperity. The firmness of his character
enabled him to resist the influence of the luxury by
which he was surrounded ; he neither gave himself up
to it, nor permitted it in others; indeed, but little
before his death, the aged monarch led in person his
troops to the attack on Dara (A.D. 573), with a spirit as
active and as daring as he had shown in his earliest
enterprises. The last days, however, of his life, were
marked by some failures, the Emperor Justin having
yielded to the importunities of the Turks, who offered
an alliance against the common enemy; and, in the
battle of Melitene, the Scythian chief turned the flank
Justinian to carry on his wars with the West, and to reduce Carthage,
Sicily, and Italy.