thus changing his return line of march was to continue in Roman Mesopotamia the course which he had adopted in Syria since the conclusion of the truce—­i.e. to increase his spoil by making each important city ransom itself.  Edessa, Constantina, and Daras were successively visited, and purchased their safety by a contribution.  According to Procopius, the proceedings before Daras were exceptional.  Although Chosroes, before he quitted Edossa, had received a communication from Justinian accepting the terms arranged with the Roman envoys at Antioch, yet, when he reached Daras, he at once resolved upon its siege.  The city was defended by two walls, an outer one of moderate strength, and an inner one sixty feet high, with towers at intervals, whose height was a hundred feet.  Chosroes, having invested the place, endeavored to penetrate within the defences by means of a mine; but, his design having been betrayed, the Romans met him with a countermine, and completely foiled his enterprise.  Unwilling to spend any more time on the siege, the Persian monarch upon this desisted from his attempt, and accepted the contribution of a thousand pounds of silver as a sufficient redemption for the great fortress.

Such is the account of the matter given to us by Procopius, who is our only extant authority for the details of this war.  But the account is violently improbable.  It represents Chosroes as openly flying in the face of a treaty the moment that he had concluded it, and as departing in a single instance from the general tenor of his proceedings in all other cases.  In view of the great improbability of such a course of action, it is perhaps allowable to suppose that Procopius has been for once carried away by partisanship, and that the real difference between the case of Daras and the other towns consisted in this, that Daras alone refused to pay its ransom, and Chosroes had, in consequence, to resort to hostilities in order to enforce it.

Still, no doubt, the whole conduct of Chosroes in enforcing ransoms from the towns after the conclusion of the truce was open to serious question, and Justinian was quite justified in treating his proceedings as a violation of his recent engagements.  It is not unlikely that, even without any such excuse, he would shortly have renewed the struggle, since the return of Belisarius in triumph from the Italian war had placed at his service for employment in the East a general from whose abilities much was naturally expected.  As it was, Justinian was able, on receiving intelligence of the fines levied on Apameia, Chalcis, Edessa, Constantina, and Daras, and of the hostile acts committed against the last-named place, with great show of reason and justice, to renounce the recently concluded peace, and to throw on the ill faith of Chosroes the blame of the rupture.