Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/70

 48 THE DEC^LINE AND FALL diadem and purple. But an angry murmur arose in the assembly as soon as he presumed to vindicate his conduct and to applaud the victories of his reign. He defined the duties of a king, and the Persian nobles listened with a smile of contempt ; they were fired with indignation when he dared to vilify the character of Chosroes ; and by the indiscreet offer of resigning the sceptre to the second of his sons he subscribed his own condemnation and sacrificed the life of his innocent favourite. The mangled bodies of the boy and his mother were exposed to the people ; the eyes of Hormouz were pierced with a hot needle ; and the punishment of the father was Elevation Succeeded by the coronation of his eldest son. Chosroes had oh^oM" ascended the throne without guilt, and his piety strove to alleviate the misery of the abdicated monarch ; from the dungeon he removed Hormouz to an apartment of the palace, supplied with liberality the consolations of sensual enjoyment, and patiently endured the furious sallies of his resentment and despair. He might despise the resentment of a blind and unpopular tyrant, but the tiara was trembling on his head, till he could subvert the power, or acquire the friendship, of the great Bahram, who sternly denied the justice of a revolution in which himself and his soldiers, the true representatives of Persia, had never been consulted. The offer of a general amnesty and of the second rank in his kingdom was answered ^^ by an epistle from Bahram, friend of the gods, conqueror of men, and enemy of tyrants, the satrap of satraps, general of the Persian armies, and a prince adorned with the title of eleven virtues.-^ He commands Chosroes, the son of Hormouz, to shun the example and fate of his father, to confine the traitors who had been released from their chains, to deposit in some holy place the diadem which he had usurped, and to accept from his gracious benefactor the pardon of his faults and the govern- ment of a province. The rebel might not be proud, and the king most assuredly was not humble ; but the one was con- scious of his strength, the other was sensible of his weakness ; and even the modest language of his reply still left room for ^9 [According to Tabari (Noldeke, p. 278), Chosroes and Bahram had an interview on the banks of the Naharvan.J 2" See the words of Theophylact, 1. iv. c. 7. Bapi^x <{,ioi toIs etoU, viKrirvt €n-i'05 oM»i«Ta . . . 6 Tov<!'A<ruiva^ (the genii) M"^floi'Mf 'OS [c. 8, 5. The me.ining of'Acrwi'es is quite obscure]. This is genuine Oriental bombast.