The ambitious and faithless Justinian aspires to be the sole master of the world.

Since the endless peace, which betrayed the common freedom of mankind, that prince, your ally in words, your enemy in actions, has alike insulted his friends and foes, and has filled the earth with blood and confusion.
Has he not violated the privileges of Armenia, the independence of Colchos, and the wild liberty of the Tzanian mountains?
Has he not usurped, with equal avidity, the city of Bosphorus on the frozen Maeotis, and the vale of palm-trees on the shores of the Red Sea?
The Moors, the Vandals, the Goths, have been successively oppressed, and each nation has calmly remained the spectator of their neighbor's ruin.
Embrace, O king! the favorable moment; the East is left without defence, while the armies of Justinian and his renowned general are detained in the distant regions of the West.

If you hesitate or delay, Belisarius and his victorious troops will soon return from the Tyber to the Tigris, and Persia may enjoy the wretched consolation of being the last devoured." [61] By such arguments, Chosroes was easily persuaded to imitate the example which he condemned: but the Persian, ambitious of military fame, disdained the inactive warfare of a rival, who issued his sanguinary commands from the secure station of the Byzantine palace.
[Footnote 57: The endless peace (Procopius, Persic.l.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, tom.