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To this Narses is reported to have replied, doubtless with much the same smile as that with which he had greeted the equestrian display of Totila, that he would spin her a thread of which neither she nor the emperor Justin would be able to find the end.

"To alter your will? Not a bad idea; but there is no hurry for that; and now, you really must go." "Yes, yes, in a minute. Surely I may have time to speak. I, for my part, know of no one whom I would sooner put in the place of Narses. . . ." "Than Orion and Heliodora? Certainly, I have no objection; but now. . . ."

Rome, indeed, could still command generals at times: Stilicho, Aetius, and afterwards Belisarius and Narses; but they were all pitiful Partingtons swishing their mops round against a most ugly Atlantic. In 410 Rome itself was sacked by Alaric; in the same year Britain, and then Brittany, rose and threw off the Roman yoke.

Narses had to acknowledge, in so many words, that the Tigris, and not the Euphrates, was to be regarded as her true boundary, and that nothing consequently was to be considered as Persian beyond the more eastern of the two rivers. Even this concession was not the last or the worst.

And when Narses heard this, he was indignant, and he heaped reproaches and abuse upon his fellow-commanders for their hesitation. And others, too, began to do the very same thing, casting insults upon one another; and from then on, giving up all thought of battle and danger, they were eager to plunder the country thereabout.

First Campaign of Galerius, A.D. 297. Second Campaign, A.D. 298. Defeat suffered by Narses. Negotiations. Conditions of Peace. Abdication and Death of Narses. It appears that on the death of Varahran III., probably without issue, there was a contention for the crown between two brothers, Narses and Hormisdas.

They might have failed, if Narses had been the antagonist of the Lombards; and the veteran warriors, the associates of his Gothic victory, would have encountered with reluctance an enemy whom they dreaded and esteemed. But the weakness of the Byzantine court was subservient to the Barbarian cause; and it was for the ruin of Italy, that the emperor once listened to the complaints of his subjects.

They are composed of the beautiful glowing brick of the ancient Roman structures, and rest upon a foundation of white marble blocks, evidently taken from the Temple of Mars, which once stood close by, and at which the armies entering Rome in triumph used to halt. The gateway was greatly injured in the sixth century during the Gothic War, but was repaired by Belisarius; or, as some say, by Narses.

The thirty-eight years of his reign are the most brilliant period of the later Roman empire, and if the military triumphs he conceived were the work of Belisarius and Narses we must attribute to him alone the magnificent conception, the tireless energy, and the heroic purpose which established the great pillars of the Corpus Juris Civilis which is the legal foundation of mediaeval and of modern Europe, the basis of all Canon Law and of all Civil Law in every civilised country.

Encountering suddenly and unexpectedly the Persian general Nabedes, who, with a small force, was strongly posted at a village called Anglon, they were compelled to engage at disadvantage; their troops, entangled in difficult ground, found themselves attacked in their rear by an ambush; Narses, the bravest of them, fell; and, a general panic seizing the entire multitude, they fled in the extremest disorder, casting away their arms, and pressing their horses till they sank and expired.