Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Justinian the Great and his successors (518-610)

Wars with the Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths 

Page 6

The two great powers of the sixth century, the Byzantine Empire and Persia, had been engaged for centuries in bloody wars on the eastern border. After the endless peace with Persia, the Persian king, Chosroes Nushirvan, a gifted and skillful ruler, recognized the high ambitions of Justinian in the West and took advantage of the situation. Aware of his own important interests in the border provinces, he seized upon a plea for help from the Ostrogoths as an opportunity to break the endless peace and open hostilities against the Byzantine Empire. A bloody war ensued, with apparent victory for the Persians. Belisarius was recalled from Italy but was unable to stop the advance of Chosroes, who forced his way into Syria and sacked and destroyed Antioch, the city which was both ancient and of great importance and the first of all the cities which the Romans had throughout the East both in wealth and in size and in population and in beauty and in prosperity of every kind.

In his onward march Chosroes reached the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In the north the Persians attempted to force their way to the Black Sea but encountered an obstacle in the Lazi of the Caucasian province of Lazica (now Lazistan), which at the time was dependent on the Byzantine Empire. It was only after great difficulty that Justinian finally succeeded in buying a truce for five years, and then he was forced to pay a large sum of money for it. But even Chosroes wearied of the endless collisions, and in the year 561 or 562 the Byzantine Empire and Persia reached an agreement establishing peace for fifty years. The historian Menander contributed accurate and detailed information about the negotiations and the terms of this treaty. The Emperor undertook to pay Persia annually a very large sum of money, while the king of Persia promised to preserve religious toleration for Christians in Persia on the strict condition that they refrain from proselytizing. Roman and Persian merchants, whatever their wares, were to carry on their traffic solely at certain prescribed places where customhouses were stationed. In this treaty the most important point for the Byzantine Empire was the agreement of the Persians to leave Lazica, the province on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea, and to resign it to the Romans. In other words, the Persians did not succeed in gaining a stronghold on the shores of the Black Sea; it remained in complete possession of the Byzantine Empire, a fact of great political and economic importance.

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