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 390 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xlii ambassadors at his feet. He accepted eleven thousand pounds of gold, as the price of an endless or indefinite peace ; ™ some mutual exchanges were regulated ; the Persian assumed the guard of the gates of Caucasus, and the demolition of Dara was suspended, on condition that it should never be made the residence of the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited, and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor ; his African conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty ; and the avarice of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage, which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the colour of friend- ship. 67 But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the slumbers of the great king ; and he heard with astonishment, envy, and fear, that Sicily, Italy, and Rome itself had been reduced in three rapid campaigns to the obedience of Justinian. Un- practised in the art of violating treaties, he secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal Almondar. That prince of the Saracens who resided at Hira C8 had not been included in the general [Harith] peace, and still waged an obscure war against his rival Arethas, the chief of the tribe of Gassan, and confederate of the empire. The subject of their dispute was an extensive sheep walk in the desert to the south of Palmyra. An immemorial tribute for the licence of pasture appeared to attest the rights of Almondar, while the Gassanite appealed to the Latin name of strata, a paved road, as an unquestionable evidence of the sovereignty and labours of the Romans. 69 The two monarchs supported the cause of their respective vassals; and the Persian Arab, without expecting the event of a slow and doubtful arbitration, 68 The endless peace (Procopius, Persic. 1. i. c. 21) was concluded or ratified in the vith year and iiid consulship of Justinian (a.d. 533, between January 1, and April 1, Pagi, torn. ii. p. 550). Marcellinus, in bis Chronicle, uses the style of Medes and Persians. 67 Procopius, Persic. 1. i. c. 26. 68 Almondar, king of Hira, was deposed by Kobad, and restored by Nushirvan. [So Hamza ; but it is doubtful.] His mother, from her beauty, was surnamed Ccelestial Water, an appellation which became hereditary, and waB extended for a more noble cause {liberality in famine) to the Arab princes of Syria (Pocock, Speci- men Hist. Arab. p. 69, 70). [Between the territories of Hira and the Ghassanides was the region of the Tha'labites, who are mentioned by Josua Stylites (c. 57) as within the sphere of Roman influence. For the career of Almondar (Mundhir), king of Hira a.d. 505-554, cp. Noldeke, Tabari, p. 170-1.] 69 Procopius, Persic. 1. ii. c. 1. We are ignorant of the origin and object of this strata, a paved road of ten days' journey from Auranitis to Babylonia. (See a Latin note in Delisle's Map Imp. Orient.) Wesseling and d'Anville are silent.