liable to market dues, which would have fallen
wholly into Roman hands; and they would further have been chargeable
with any duty, protective or even prohibitive, which Rome chose to
impose. It is not surprising that Narses here made a stand, and insisted
on commerce being left to flow in the broader channels which it had
formed for itself in the course of ages.

Rome thus terminated her first period of struggle with the newly revived
monarchy of Persia by a great victory and a great diplomatic success. If
Narses regarded the terms--and by his conduct he would seem to have done
so--as moderate under the circumstances, our conclusion must be that
the disaster which he had suffered was extreme, and that he knew the
strength of Persia to be, for the time, exhausted. Forced to relinquish
his suzerainty over Armenia and Iberia, he saw those countries not
merely wrested from himself, but placed under the protectorate, and so
made to minister to the strength, of his rival. Nor was this all. Rome
had gradually been advancing across Mesopotamia and working her way
from the Euphrates to the Tigris. Narses had to acknowledge, in so many
words, that the Tigris, and not the Euphrates, was to be regarded as
her true boundary, and that nothing consequently was to be considered as
Persian beyond the more eastern of the two rivers. Even this concession
was not the last or the worst. Narses had finally to submit to see his
empire dismembered, a portion of Media attached to Armenia, and five
provinces, never hitherto in dispute, torn from Persia and added to the
dominion of Rome. He had to allow Rome to establish herself in force on
the left bank of the Tigris, and so to lay open to her assaults a great
portion of his northern besides all his western frontier. He had to
see her brought to the very edge of the Iranic plateau, and within a
fortnight's march of Persia Proper. The ambition to rival his ancestor
Sapor, if really entertained, was severely punished; and the defeated
prince must have felt that he had been most ill-advised in making the
venture.

Narses did not long continue on the throne after the conclusion of this
disgraceful, though, it may be, necessary, treaty. It was made in
A.D. 297. He abdicated in A.D. 301. It may have been disgust at his
ill-success, it may have been mere weariness of absolute power, which
caused him to descend from his high position and retire into private
life. He was so fortunate as to have a son of