"I said: for the present."
"Why?"
"Because what is necessary precedes what is pleasant. He who has to defend his own house should not break into strange dwellings."
"What does that mean?"
"It means, that no danger threatens your empire from the West, from the Goths. The enemy who can, and perhaps will, destroy it, comes from the East."
"The Persians!" cried Justinian contemptuously.
"Since when," interposed Belisarius, "since when does Narses, my great rival, fear the Persians?"
"Narses fears no one," answered the latter, without looking at his interrogator, "neither the Persians whom he has beaten, nor you whom the Persians have beaten. But he knows the Orient. If not the Persians, then it will be others who follow them. The tempest which threatens Byzantium approaches from the Tigris, not from the Tiber."
"Well, and what does that mean?"
"It means, that it is a shameful thing for you, O Emperor, and for the Roman name which we still bear, that you should, year by year, buy peace from Chosroes, the Persian Khan, at the cost of many hundredweights of gold."