as
terminated the thirty years' war, which, commencing in A.D. 502 by the
attack of Kobad on Annastasius, was brought to a close in A.D. 532, and
ratified by Justinian in the year following.

When Chosroes consented to substitute close relations of amity with Rome
for the hereditary enmity which had been the normal policy of his house,
he probably expected that no very striking or remarkable results would
follow. He supposed that the barbarian neighbors of the empire on the
north and on the west would give her arms sufficient employment, and
that the balance of power in Eastern Europe and Western Asia would
remain much as before. But in these expectations he was disappointed.
Justinian no sooner found his eastern frontier secure than he directed
the whole force of the empire upon his enemies in the regions of the
west, and in the course of half a dozen years (A.D. 533-539), by the
aid of his great general, Belisarius, he destroyed the kingdom of the
Vandals in the region about Carthage and Tunis, subdued the Moors,
and brought to its last gasp the power of the Ostrogoths in Italy. The
territorial extent of his kingdom was nearly doubled by these victories;
his resources were vastly increased; the prestige of his arms was
enormously raised; veteran armies had been formed which despised danger,
and only desired to be led against fresh enemies; and officers had been
trained capable of conducting operations of every kind, and confident,
under all circumstances, of success. 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 Bass