Читать книгу The Dark Ages, 476-918 онлайн

104 страница из 149

This ruinous draining of the vital power of the empire only began to be seriously felt after 540, when, for the first time, Justinian was compelled to wage war at once in East and West, and yet refused to slacken from his building. The Gothic war—contrary to all probability and expectation—was still destined to run on for thirteen years more; the Persian lasted for sixteen, and, when they were over, the emperor and the empire alike were but the shadow of their former selves: they were unconquered, but drained of all their strength and marrow.

THE PERSO-ROMAN FRONTIER UNDER JUSTINIAN.

We have already mentioned that the young king Chosroes of Persia, stirred up by the embassy of Witiges, and dreading lest the power which had subdued Carthage and Rome should ere long stretch out its hand to Ctesiphon, had found a casus belli, and crossed the Mesopotamian frontier. Some blood-feuds between Arab hordes respectively subject to Persia and Constantinople, and a dispute about the suzerainty of some tribes in the Armenian highlands formed a good enough excuse for renewing the war at a moment when Justinian’s best general and 50,000 of the flower of his troops were absent in Italy and Africa.