ambassador, Zemarchus, accompanied him on a portion of his march, and
witnessed his insulting treatment of a Persian envoy, sent by
Chosroes to meet him and deprecate his attack. Beyond this point exact
information fails us; but we may suspect that this is the expedition
commemorated by Mirk-hond, wherein the Great Khan, having invaded the
Persian territory in force, made himself master of Shash, Ferghana,
Samarkand, Bokhara, Kesh, and Nesf, but, hearing that Hornisdas, son
of Chosroes, was advancing against him at the head of a numerous army,
suddenly fled, evacuating all the country that he had occupied, and
retiring to the most distant portion of Turkestan. At any rate the
expedition cannot have had any great success; for shortly afterwards
(A.D. 571) we find Turkish ambassadors once more visiting the Byzantine
court, and entreating Justin to renounce the fifty years' peace and
unite with them in a grand attack upon the common enemy, which, if
assaulted simultaneously on either side, might (they argued) be almost
certainly crushed. Justin gave the ambassadors no definite reply, but
renewed the alliance with Dizabul, and took seriously into consideration
the question whether he should not yield to the representations made
to him, and renew the war which Justinian had terminated nine years
previously.

There were many circumstances which urged him towards a rupture. The
payments to be made under the fifty years' peace had in his eyes the
appearance of a tribute rendered by Rome to Persia, which was, he
thought, an intolerable disgrace. A subsidy, not very dissimilar, which
Justinian had allowed the Saracenic Arabs under Persian rule, he had
already discontinued; and hostilities had, in consequence, already
commenced between the Persian and the Roman Saracens. The successes
of Chosroes in Western Arabia had at once provoked his jealousy,
and secured to Rome, in that quarter, an important ally in the great