Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

*7 2 HISTORY OF PERSIA.
tion broke out, though the king
himself inclined to
mercy ; and the then Christian prelate having impru-
of the
dently burnt one of the fire temples, the rage
populace could not be restrained, and the bishop and
a large number of the Christians were put to death
with great cruelty. The natural result of these excesses
was a fresh war between the Romans and the Persians,
prolonged with various success : as, however, the Per-
sians on the whole had suffered the most, they were
willing to accept terms of peace, to which they would
hardly otherwise have assented.
About the year A.D. 458, Fin'iz I ascended the
throne, and was soon engaged in a memorable war with
the Huns, which, after lasting for several years and
entailing heavy losses on the Persians, was finally
terminated by his own death and the destruction of his
army. It was during the latter years of the reign of
Kobad, and after a series of conflicts between the East
and West, so alike in character and result, as to be
wearisome in their description, that the Romans to
prevent the constant inroads of the Persians, founded a
new colony at Dara, about fourteen miles from Nisibis,
with walls of such strength as to be impregnable to
any machines of war their enemies could bring against
them.
" Dara continued more than sixty years," says
Gibbon, " to fulfil the wishes of its founders, and to
provoke the jealousy of the Peisians, who incessantly
complained that this impregnable fortress had beenconstructed
in manifest violation of the treaty of
peace between the two empires."
At length,
in A.D. 531, Khosru Nushfrw^n1 was chosen
1 Abundant myths have grown up around the name of Nushirwan.