But as time went on Cabades became more high-handed in the administration of the government, and introduced innovations into the constitution, among which was a law which he promulgated providing that Persians should have communal intercourse with their women, a measure which by no means pleased the common people. [486 A.D.] Accordingly they rose against him, removed him from the throne, and kept him in prison in chains.  They then chose Blases, the brother of Perozes, to be their king, since, as has been said, no male offspring of Perozes was left, and it is not lawful among the Persians for any man by birth a common citizen to be set upon the throne, except in case the royal family be totally extinct.  Blases, upon receiving the royal power, gathered together the nobles of the Persians and held a conference concerning Cabades; for it was not the wish of the majority to put the man to death.  After the expression of many opinions on both sides there came forward a certain man of repute among the Persians, whose name was Gousanastades, and whose office that of “chanaranges” (which would be the Persian term for general); his official province lay on the very frontier of the Persian territory in a district which adjoins the land of the Ephthalitae.  Holding up his knife, the kind with which the Persians were accustomed to trim their nails, of about the length of a man’s finger, but not one-third as wide as a finger, he said:  “You see this knife, how extremely small it is; nevertheless it is able at the present time to accomplish a deed, which, be assured, my dear Persians, a little later two myriads of mail-clad men could not bring to pass.”  This he said hinting that, if they did not put Cabades to death, he would straightway make trouble for the Persians.  But they were altogether unwilling to put to death a man of the royal blood, and decided to confine him in a castle which it is their habit to call the “Prison of Oblivion.”  For if anyone is cast into it, the law permits no mention of him to be made thereafter, but death is the penalty for the man who speaks his name; for this reason it has received this title among the Persians.  On one occasion, however, the History of the Armenians relates that the operation of the law regarding the Prison of Oblivion was suspended by the Persians in the following way.

There was once a truceless war, lasting two and thirty years, between the Persians and the Armenians, when Pacurius was king of the Persians, and of the Armenians, Arsaces, of the line of the Arsacidae.  And by the long continuance of this war it came about that both sides suffered beyond measure, and especially the Armenians.  But each nation was possessed by such great distrust of the other that neither of them could make overtures of peace to their opponents.  In the meantime it happened that the Persians became engaged in a war with certain other barbarians who lived not far from the Armenians.  Accordingly the Armenians, in their eagerness to make a display