determined upon submission.  He vacated the throne in favor of Kobad, without risking the chance of a battle, and descended voluntarily into a private station.  Different stories are told of his treatment by the restored monarch.  According to Procopius, he was blinded after a cruel method long established among the Persians; but Mirkhond declares that he was pardoned, and even received from his brother marked signs of affection and favor.

The coins of Zamasp have the usual inflated ball and mural crown, but with a crescent in place of the front limb of the crown.  The ends of the diadem appear over the two shoulders.  On either side of the head there is a star, and over either shoulder a crescent.  Outside the encircling ring, or “pearl border,” we see, almost for the first time, three stars with crescents.  The reverse bears the usual fire-altar, with a star and crescent on either side of the flame.  The legend is extremely brief, being either Zamasp or Bag Zamasp, i.e.  “Zamaspes,” or “the divine Zamaspes.” [PLATE XXII., Fig. 1.]

[Illustration:  PLATE XXII.]

CHAPTER XIX.

Second Reign of Kobad.  His Change of Attitude towards the Followers of Mazdak.  His Cause of Quarrel with Rome.  First Roman War of Kobad.  Peace made A.D. 505.  Rome fortifies Daras and Theodosiopolis.  Complaint made by Persia.  Negotiations of Kobad with Justin:  Proposed Adoption of Chosroes by the Latter.  Internal Troubles in Persia.  Second Roman War of Kobad, A.D. 524-531.  Death of Kobad.  His Character.  His coins.

The second reign of Kobad covered a period of thirty years, extending from A.D. 501 to A.D. 531.  He was contemporary, during this space, with the Roman emperors Anastasius, Justin, and Justinian, with Theodoric, king of Italy, with Cassiodorus, Symmachus, Boethius, Procopius, and Belisarius.  The Oriental writers tell us but little of this portion of his history.  Their silence, however, is fortunately compensated by the unusual copiousness of the Byzantines, who deliver, at considerable length, the entire series of transactions in which Kobad was engaged with the Constantinopolitan emperors, and furnish some interesting notices of other matters which occupied him.  Procopius especially, the eminent rhetorician and secretary of Belisarius, who was born about the time of Kobad’s restoration to the Persian thrones and became secretary to the great general four years before Kobad’s death, is ample in his details of the chief occurrences, and deserves a confidence which the Byzantines can rarely claim, from being at once a contemporary and a man of remarkable intelligence.  “His facts,” as Gibbon well observes, “are collected from the personal experience and free conversation of a soldier, a statesman, and a traveller; his style continually aspires, and often attains, to the merit of strength and elegance; his, reflections, more especially in the speeches, which he too frequently inserts, contain a rich fund of political knowledge; and the historian, excited by the generous ambition of pleasing and instructing posterity, appears to disdain the prejudices of the people and the flattery of courts.”