Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/243

 was visited with condign punishment by the Deity, who sought to restrain them from encroaching beyond their proper sphere. He pointed at Justinian, on whom he cast the whole onus of originating the war. But to his hearers it seemed that only wanton aggression had impelled him on this campaign, whilst all understood that he had delayed the assault discreetly lest his own army should incur needless risk.

The fate of Antioch was presently decided. All the remaining inhabitants were seized as captives, and the buildings were given over to pillage and fire. Treasures of gold and silver and works of art in marble were accumulated for the special benefit of the Shah, who departed, leaving incendiaries in the city to complete the task of destruction. Ultimately, however, Chosroes showed himself as a benignant master of the Antiochians whom he had carried off. In the vicinity of Ctesiphon he built a new city, to which he gave the name of Chosroantioch, and furnished it with everything appertaining to a Roman town, including a circus and public baths. Here the captives were housed under the eye of the monarch himself, with no intermediary satrap, and endowed with many privileges which were not enjoyed by his Persian subjects. Moreover, if any of the relatives of the inhabitants, who had been enslaved, succeeded in escaping to this town, they were granted a permanent asylum, so that their masters could not reclaim them, even should they be nobles of the court.

It might be said, without much sacrifice of accuracy, that the war which had now broken out between Rome and