It must have been with feelings of dissatisfaction and alarm not easily to be dissembled that the Great King heard of his brother's long series of victories and conquests, each step in which constituted a fresh danger to Persia by aggrandizing the power whom she had chiefly to fear.

At first his annoyance found a vent in insolent demands for a share of the Roman spoils, which Justinian thought it prudent to humor but, as time went on, and the tide of victory flowed more and more strongly in one direction, he became less and less able to contain himself, and more and more determined to renounce his treaty with Rome and renew the old struggle for supremacy.
His own inclination, a sufficiently strong motive in itself, was seconded and intensified by applications made to him from without on the part of those who had especial reasons for dreading the advance of Rome, and for expecting to be among her next victims.

Witiges, the Ostrogoth king of Italy, and Bassaces, an Armenian chief, were the most important of these applicants.

Embassies from these opposite quarters reached Chosroes in the same year, A.D.539, and urged him for his own security to declare war against Justinian before it was too late.

"Justinian," the ambassadors said, "aimed at universal empire.