THE BYZANTINES AND THE PERSIANS. 249 



manufactures : for two Nestorian monks had brought 

 the eggs of the silkworm from China in hollow canes. 

 These eggs had been hatched under lukewarm dung, and 

 the culture of the cocoon had been established for the 

 first time on European soil. The eastern boundary 

 of the Empire was sometimes the Tigris, sometimes 

 the Euphrates ; the land of Mesopotamia, which lay- 

 between the rivers, was the subject of continual war 

 between the Byzantines and the Persians. 



Alexander the Great had not been long dead before 

 the Parthians, a race of hardy mountaineers, occupied 

 the lands to the east of the Euphrates, made them- 

 selves famous in their wars with Rome, and established 

 a wide empire. In the third century it was broken 

 up into petty principalities, and a private citizen who 

 claimed to be heir-at-law of the old Persian kings 

 headed a party, seized the crown, restored the Zoro- 

 astrian religion, and raised the Empire to a state of 

 power and magnificence scarcely inferior to that of 

 the Great Kings. But the Greeks were still in Asia 

 Minor and Egypt ; and it became the hereditary am- 

 bition of the Persians to drive them back into their 

 own country. In the seventh century Chosroes the 

 Second accomplished this idea, and restored the 

 frontiers of Cambyses and the first Darius. He con- 

 quered Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. He carried 

 his arms to Cyrene, and extinguished the last glimmer 

 of culture in that ancient colony. Heraclius, the 

 Byzantine Emperor, was in despair. While the Persians 

 overran his provinces in Asia a horde of Cossacks 

 threatened him in Europe. Constantinople, he feared, 

 would soon be surrounded, and it already suffered 

 famine from the loss of Egypt, as Rome had formerly 

 suffered when the Vandals plundered it of Africa. He 



