and barren. Yet the Brachman may assume the merit of
_inventing_ a pleasing fiction, which adorns the nakedness of truth, and
alleviates, perhaps, to a royal ear, the harshness of instruction. With
a similar design, to admonish kings that they are strong only in the
strength of their subjects, the same Indians invented the game of chess,
which was likewise introduced into Persia under the reign of Nushirvan.

Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.--Part III.

The son of Kobad found his kingdom involved in a war with the successor
of Constantine; and the anxiety of his domestic situation inclined
him to grant the suspension of arms, which Justinian was impatient to
purchase. Chosroes saw the Roman ambassadors at his feet. He accepted
eleven thousand pounds of gold, as the price of an _endless_ or
indefinite peace: some mutual exchanges were regulated; the Persian
assumed the guard of the gates of Caucasus, and the demolition of Dara
was suspended, on condition that it should never be made the residence
of the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited,
and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his African
conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty; and the avarice
of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage,
which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the
color of friendship. But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the
slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment, envy, and
fear, that Sicily, Italy, and Rome itself, had been reduced, in three
rapid campaigns, to the obedience of Justinian. Unpractised in the art
of violating treaties, he secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal
Almondar. That prince of the Saracens, who resided at Hira, had not been
included in the general peace, and still waged an obscure war against
his rival Arethas, the chief of the tribe of Gassan, and confederate of
the empire. The subject of their dispute was an extensive sheep-walk
in the desert to the south of Palmyra. An immemorial tribute for the
license of pasture appeared to attest the rights of Almondar, while
the Gassanite appealed to the Latin name of strata, a paved road, as an
unquestionable evidence of the sovereignty and labors of the Romans. The
two monarchs supported the cause of their respective vassals; and
the Persian Arab, without expecting the event of a slow and doubtful
arbitration, enriched his flying