The natural result followed. Kobad at once declared war. The two empires had now been uninterruptedly at peace for sixty, and, with the exception of a single campaign (that of A.D. 441), for eighty years. They had ceased to feel that respect for each other’s arms and valor which experience gives, and which is the best preservative against wanton hostilities. Kobad was confident in his strength, since he was able to bring into the field, besides the entire force of Persia, a largo Ephthalite contingent, and also a number of Arabs. Anastasius, perhaps, scarcely thought that Persia would go to war on account of a pecuniary claim which she had allowed to be disregarded for above half a century. The resolve of Kobad evidently took him by surprise; but he had gone too far to recede. The Roman pride would not allow him to yield to a display of force what he had refused when demanded peacefully; and he was thus compelled to maintain by arms the position which he had assumed without anticipating its consequences.
The war began by a sudden inroad of the host of Persia into Roman Armenia, where Theodosiopolis was still the chief stronghold and the main support of the Roman power. Unprepared for resistance, this city was surrendered after a short siege by its commandant, Constantine, after which the greater part of Armenia was overrun and ravaged. From Armenia Kobad conducted his army into Northern Mesopotamia, and formed the siege of Amida about the commencement of the winter. The great strength of Amida has been already noticed in this volume. Kobad found it ungarrisoned, and only protected by a small force, cantoned in its neighborhood, under the philosopher, Alypius. But the resolution of the townsmen, and particularly of the monks, was great; and a most strenuous resistance met all his efforts to take the place. At first his hope was to effect a breach in the defences by means of the ram; but the besieged employed the customary means of destroying his engines, and, where these failed, the strength and thickness of the walls was found to be such that no serious impression could be made on them by the Persian battering train. It was necessary to have recourse to some other device; and Kobad proceeded to erect a mound in the immediate neighborhood of the wall, with a view of dominating the town, driving the defenders from the battlements, and then taking the place by escalade. He raised an immense work; but it was undermined by the enemy, and at last fell in with a terrible crash, involving hundreds in its ruin. It is said that after this failure Kobad despaired of success, and determined to draw off his army; but the taunts and insults of the besieged, or confidence in the prophecies of the Magi, who saw an omen of victory in the grossest of all the insults, caused him to change his intention and still continue the siege. His perseverance was soon afterwards rewarded. A soldier discovered in the wall the outlet of a drain or sewer imperfectly blocked up with rubble, and, removing this during the night, found himself able to pass through the wall into the town. He communicated his discovery to Kobad, who took his measures accordingly. Sending, the next night, a few picked men through the drain, to seize the nearest tower, which happened to be slackly guarded by some sleepy monks, who the day before had been keeping festival, he brought the bulk of his troops with scaling ladders to the adjoining portion of the wall, and by his presence, exhortations, and threats, compelled them to force their way into the place. The inhabitants resisted strenuously, but were overpowered by numbers, and the carnage in the streets was great. At last an aged priest, shocked at the indiscriminate massacre, made bold to address the monarch himself and tell him that it was no kingly act to slaughter captives. “Why, then, did you elect to fight?” said the angry prince. “It was God’s doing,” replied the priest, astutely; “He willed that thou shouldest owe thy conquest of Amida, not to our weakness, but to thy own valor.” The flattery pleased Kobad, and induced him to stop the effusion of blood; but the sack was allowed to continue; the whole town was pillaged; and the bulk of the inhabitants were carried off as slaves.
The siege of Amida lasted eighty days, and the year A.D. 503 had commenced before it was over. Anastasius, on learning the danger of his frontier town, immediately despatched to its aid a considerable force, which he placed under four commanders—Areobindus, the grandson of the Gothic officer of the same name who distinguished himself in the Persian war of Theodosius; Celer, captain of the imperial guard; Patricius, the Phrygian; and Hypatius, one of his own nephews. The army, collectively, is said to have been more numerous than any that Rome had ever brought into the field against the Persians but it was weakened by the divided command, and it was moreover broken up into detachments which acted independently of each other. Its advent also was tardy. Not only did it arrive too late to save Amida, but it in no way interfered with the after-movements of Kobad, who, leaving a small garrison to maintain his new conquest, carried off the whole of his rich booty to his city of Nisibis, and placed the bulk of his troops in a good position upon his own frontier. When Areobindus, at the head of the first division, reached Amida and heard that the Persians had fallen back, he declined the comparatively inglorious work of a siege, and pressed forward, anxious to carry the war into Persian territory. He seems actually to have crossed the border and invaded the district of Arzanene, when news reached him that Kobad was marching upon him with all his troops, whereupon he instantly fled, and threw himself into Constantia, leaving his camp and stores to be taken by the enemy. Meanwhile another division of the Roman army, under Patrilcius and Hypatius, had followed in the steps of Areobindus, and meeting with the advance-guard of Kobad, which consisted of eight hundred Ephthalites, had destroyed it almost to a man.
Ignorant, however, of the near presence of the main Persian army, this body of troops allowed itself soon afterwards to be surprised on the banks of a stream, while some of the men were bathing and others were taking their breakfast, and was completely cut to pieces by Kobad, scarcely any but the generals escaping.
Thus far success had been wholly on the side of the Persians; and if circumstances had permitted Kobad to remain at the seat of war and continue to direct the operations of his troops in person, there is every to reason to believe that he would have gained still greater advantages. The Roman generals were incompetent; they were at variance among themselves; and they were unable to control the troops under their command. The soldiers were insubordinate, without confidence in their officers, and inclined to grumble at such an unwonted hardship as a campaign prolonged into the winter. Thus all the conditions of the war were in favor of Persia. But unfortunately for Kobad, it happened that, at the moment when his prospects were the fairest, a danger in another quarter demanded his presence, and required him to leave the conduct of the Roman war to others. An Ephthalite invasion called him to the defence of his north-eastern frontier before the year A.D. 503 was over, and from this time the operations in Mesopotamia were directed, not by the king in person, but by his generals. A change is at once apparent. In A.D. 504 Celer invaded Arzanene, destroyed a number of forts, and ravaged the whole province with fire and sword. Thence marching southward, he threated Nisibis, which is said, to have been within a little of yielding itself. Towards winter Patricius and Hypatius took heart, and, collecting an army, commenced the siege of Amida, which they attempted to storm on several occasions, but without success. After a while they turned the siege into a blockade, entrapped the commander of the, Persian garrison, Glones, by a stratagem, and reduced the defenders of the place to such distress that it would have been impossible to hold put much longer. It seems to have been when matters were at this point that an ambassador of high rank arrived from Kobad, empowered to conclude a peace, and instructed to declare his master’s willingness to surrender all his conquests, including Amida, on the payment of a considerable sum of money. The Roman generals, regarding Amida as impregnable, and not aware of the exhaustion of its stores, gladly consented. They handed over to the Persians a thousand pounds’ weight of gold, and received in exchange the captured city and territory. A treaty was signed by which the contracting powers undertook to remain at peace and respect each other’s dominions for the space of seven years. No definite arrangement seems to have been made with respect to the yearly payment on account of the fortress, Birapa-rach, the demand for which had occasioned the war. This claim remained in abeyance, to be pressed or neglected, as Persia might consider her interests to require.
The Ephthalite war, which compelled Kobad to make peace with Anastasius, appears to have occupied him uninterruptedly for ten years. During its continuance Rome took advantage of her rival’s difficulties to continue the system (introduced under the younger Theodosius) of augmenting her own power, and crippling that of Persia, by establishing strongly fortified posts upon her border in the immediate vicinity of Persian territory. Not content with restoring Theodosiopolis and greatly strengthening it defences, Anastasius erected an entirely new fortress at Daras, on the southern skirts of the Mons Masius, within twelve miles of Nisibis, at the edge of the great Mesopotamian plain. This place was not a mere fort, but a city; it contained churches, baths, porticoes, large granaries, and extensive cisterns. It constituted a standing menace to Persia; and its erection was in direct violation of the treaty made by Theodosius with Isdigerd II., which was regarded as still in force by both nations.
We cannot be surprised that Kobad, when his Ephthalite war was over, made formal complaint at Constantinople (ab. A.D. 517); of the infraction of the treaty. Anastasius was unable to deny the charge. He endeavored at first to meet it by a mixture of bluster with professions of friendship; but when this method did not appear effectual he had recourse to an argument whereof the Persians on most occasions acknowledged the force. By the expenditure of a large sum of money he either corrupted the ambassadors of Kobad, or made them honestly doubt whether the sum paid would not satisfy their master.
In A.D. 518 Anastasius died, and the imperial authority was assumed by the Captain of the Guard, the “Dacian peasant,” Justin. With him Kobad very shortly entered jinto negotiations. He had not, it is clear, accepted the pecuniary sacrifice of Anastasius as a complete satisfaction. He felt that he had many grounds of quarrel with the Romans, There was the old matter of the annual payment due on account of the fortress of Biraparach; there was the recent strengthening of Theodosiopolis, and building of Daras; there was moreover an interference of Rome at this time in the region about the Caucasus which was very galling to Persia and was naturally resented by her monarch. One of the first proceedings of Justin after he ascended the throne was to send an embassy with rich gifts to the court of a certain Hunnic chief of these parts, called Ziligdes or Zilgibis, and to conclude a treaty with him by which the Hun bound himself to assist the Romans against the Persians. Soon afterwards a Lazic prince, named Tzath, whose country was a Persian dependency, instead of seeking inauguration from Kobad, proceeded on the death of his father to the court of Constantinople, and expressed his wish to become a Christian, and to hold his crown as one of Rome’s vassal monarchs. Justin gave this person a warm welcome, had him baptized, married him to a Roman lady of rank, and sent him back to Lazica adorned with a diadem and robes that sufficiently indicated his dependent position. The friendly relations established between Rome and Persia by the treaty of A.D. 505 were, under these circumstances, greatly disturbed, and on both sides it would seem that war was expected to break out. But neither Justin nor Kobad was desirous of a rupture. Both were advanced in years, and both had domestic troubles to occupy them. Kobad was at this time especially anxious about the succession. He had four sons, Kaoses, Zames, Phthasuarsas, and Chosroes, of whom Kaoses was the eldest. This prince, however, did not please him. His affections were fixed on his fourth son, Chosroes, and he had no object more at heart than to secure the crown for this favorite child. The Roman writers tell us that instead of resenting the proceedings of Justin in the years A.D. 520-522, Kobad made the strange proposal to him about this time that he should adopt Chosroes, in order that that prince might have the aid of the Romans against his countrymen, if his right of succession should be disputed. It is, no doubt, difficult to believe that such a proposition should have been made; but the circumstantial manner in which Procopius, writing not forty years after, relates the matter, renders it almost impossible for us to reject the story as a pure fabrication. There must have been some foundation for it. In the negotiations between Justin and Kobad during the early years of the former, the idea of Rome pledging herself to acknowledge Chosroes as his father’s successor must have been brought forward. The proposal, whatever its exact terms, led however to no result. Rome declined to do as Kobad desired; and thus another ground of estrangement was added to those which had previously made the renewal of the Roman war a mere question of time.
It is probable that the rupture would have occurred earlier than it did had not Persia about the year A.D. 523 become once more the scene of religious discord and conspiracy. The followers of Mazdak had been hitherto protected by Kobad, and had lived in peace and multiplied throughout all the provinces of the empire. Content with the toleration which they enjoyed, they had for above twenty years created no disturbance, and their name had almost disappeared from the records of history. But as time went on they began to feel that their position was insecure. Their happiness, their very safety, depended upon a single life; and as Kobad advanced in years they grew to dread more and more the prospect which his death would open. Among his sons there was but one who had embraced their doctrine; and this prince, Phthasuarsas, had but little chance of being chosen to be his father’s successor. Kaoses enjoyed the claim of natural right; Chosroes was his father’s favorite; Zames had the respect and good wishes of the great mass of the people; Phthasuarsas was disliked by the Magi, and, if the choice lay with them, was certain to be passed over. The sectaries therefore determined not to wait the natural course of events, but to shape them to their own purposes. They promised Phthasuarsas to obtain by their prayers his father’s abdication and his own appointment to succeed him, and asked him to pledge himself to establish their religion as that of the State when he became king. The prince consented; and the Mazdakites proceeded to arrange their plans, when, unfortunately for them, Kobad discovered, or suspected, that a scheme was on foot to deprive him of his crown. Whether the designs of the sectaries were really treasonable or not is uncertain; but whatever they were, an Oriental monarch was not likely to view them with favor. In the East it is an offence even to speculate on the death of the king; and Kobad saw in the intrigue which had been set on foot a criminal and dangerous conspiracy. He determined at once to crush the movement. Inviting the Mazdakites to a solemn assembly, at which he was to confer the royal dignity on Phthasuarsas, he caused his army to surround the unarmed multitude and massacre the entire number.
Relieved from this peril, Kobad would at once have declared war against Justin, and have marched an army into Roman territory, had not troubles broken out in Iberia, which made it necessary for him to stand on the defensive. Adopting the intolerant policy so frequently pursued, and generally with such ill results, by the Persian kings, Kobad had commanded Gurgenes, the Iberian monarch, to renounce Christianity and profess the Zoroastrian religion. Especially he had required that the Iberian custom of burying the dead should be relinquished, and that the Persian practice of exposing corpses to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey should supersede the Christian rite of sepulture. Gurgenes was too deeply attached to his faith to entertain these propositions for a moment. He at once shook off the Persian yoke, and, declaring himself a vassal of Rome, obtained a promise from Justin that he would never desert the Iberian cause. Rome, however, was not prepared to send her own armies into this distant and inhospitable region; her hope was to obtain aid from the Tatars of the Crimea, and to play off these barbarians against the forces wherewith Kobad might be expected shortly to vindicate his authority. An attempt to engage the Crimeans generally in this service was made, but it was not successful. A small force was enrolled and sent to the assistance of Gurgenes. But now the Persians took the field in strength. A large army was sent into Iberia by Kobad, under a general named Boes. Gurgenes saw resistance to be impossible. He therefore fled the country, and threw himself into Lazica, where the difficult nature of the ground, the favor of the natives, and the assistance of the Romans enabled him to maintain himself. Iberia, however, was lost, and passed once more under the Persians, who even penetrated into Lazic territory and occupied some forts which commanded the passes between Lazica and Iberia.