It was ten years before Belisarius returned to the Persian frontier. Of what happened in the East during his absence, especially the further misfortunes that overtook our dear Antioch, I promise you a round account when my story reaches that point. Meanwliilc a few words will suffice. King Kobad died, shortly after Belisarius s recall, at the age of eighty-three, but not before ordering a further invasion of our territories. His forces were so strong that in Roman Armenia our soldiers were obliged to retire into their walled cities while the Persians laid the country waste. The succession to Kobad's throne was then disputed by three claimants. These were Khaous, the legitimate heir; one-eyed Jamaspes, the second in age, as regent on behalf of his infant son (himself debarred because of his deformity); and Khosrou, the youngest, whom Kobad had nominated in his will. Khosrou was acclaimed by a vote of the Grand Council and duly crowned. He soon destroyed his brothers, who revolted against him, and all their male heirs. But he did not feel himself secure upon the throne, even after this massacre, and decided to come to terms with Justinian.
These twin eyes of the world therefore synoptically signed a peace, named 'The Eternal', under which all territory whatsoever conquered by cither side during the late wars should be restored, and Justinian should pay Khosrou a large sum for the perpetual maintenance of the Persian garrison at the Caspian Gates – some 800,000 gold pieces -and, without dismantling the fortifications of Daras, agree to with-draw his advanced headquarters to Constantina, which was less dangerously close to the frontier. There was also a curious condition: that the pagan philosophers who had fled to the Persian Court from Athens when Justinian closed the University there, four years previously – poor Symmachus was among their number – should be allowed to return temporarily to the Roman Empire, without fear of persecution, for the purpose of setting their affairs in order and of collecting a library of the pagan Classics for Khosrou's own edification. Justinian agreed to this, content that he had dealt the Old Gods their death-blow not only at Athens but throughout his dominions: he had everywhere converted their venerable temples into Christian churches and sequestrated their treasures.
So much for Persia. But Theodora was right in anticipating trouble from the factions, and Justinian in consenting to the recall of Belisarius – but for whom, as I shall show, he would certainly have lost his throne and almost certainly his life.
Must I repeat what I have already said about the virulence of the hatred between the Blues and Greens? Preoccupied now by increasingly bitter disputes as to the nature of the Son, they were engaged in justifying a Gospel prophecy. For, according to the Evangelist Matthew, Jesus told His twelve Apostles, when He first sent them out preaching Christianity: 'Do not think that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's foes shall be the members of his own household.' So it was in many a Christian household in the City. Son and daughter perhaps wore the Blue favour, and were Orthodox two-nature people, while father and mother and daughter-in-law wore the Green and maintained the single nature. They threw kettles of boiling water at one another as they sat at meals, or poisoned the wine; and blasphemed most learnedly. If the Greens set up a statue of a victorious charioteer and inscribed it: 'To the glory of Such-and-Such, winner of the Foundation Stakes, and the greater glory of Christ single-natured', the Blues would gather together at night and deface the inscription, then behead the statue and paint it blue; however, the Greens would perhaps retaliate by attempting to set fire to some wine-shop or other which the Blues used as their headquarters. It was not safe to be out in the streets after dark, not for physicians hurrying to attend the sick, nor for priests going at a more leisurely pace to administer the last Sacrament to the dying, nor for midnight adulterers, nor even for the poorest sort of outcasts. Gangs of young coxcombs ranged the streets at night, murdering and robbing indiscriminately; and the police were either bribed or terrorized into inertness. The war was even waged against the dead. Holes were bored at night in the tombs of departed factionists, and through them were dropped lead tablets of execration: 'Sleep unsoundly, vile Blue [or Green] until Judgement Day, dreaming of Green [or Blue) victories, and awake only to be damned to everlasting perdition!'
