Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/37

 There Chosroes would join them and institute the new régime with due formality. They obeyed, and were immediately surrounded by a division of the army, who cut them to pieces. The remnants of the sect throughout the provinces were afterwards hunted down, and got rid of by burning at the stake.

The moment we turn our attention to the Persian court, and begin to observe the material and ceremonial attributes of the monarch, we discover the prototype of almost the whole fabric of Byzantine state as displayed at Constantinople. In the East was found the model of those accretions which gradually transformed the unassuming Roman Emperor of the Tiber into the haughty autocrat who overawed his subjects with pageantry on the Bosphorus; but the native sobriety of Europe always stopped short of the pronounced extravagance and hyperbole of Orientalism. The throne of the Sassanians stood between four pillars which upheld a ciborium. On sitting down, the Shahinshah inserted his head into the crown, a mass of precious metal and jewels suspended by a chain, too ponderous to be worn without extraneous support. No epithet was too lofty for*