Before passing to the consideration of the eventful reign with which we shall now have to occupy ourselves, a glance at the personal character of the deceased monarch will perhaps be expected by the reader.  Hormuzd is pronounced by the concurrent voice of the Greeks and the Orientals one of the worst princes that ever ruled over Persia.  The fair promise of his early years was quickly clouded over; and during the greater portion of his reign he was a jealous and capricious tyrant, influenced by unworthy favorites, and stimulated to ever-increasing severities by his fears.  Eminence of whatsoever kind roused his suspicions; and among his victims were included, besides the noble and the great, a large number of philosophers and men of science.  His treatment of Bahram was at once a folly and a crime—­an act of black ingratitude, and a rash step, whereof he had not counted the consequences.  To his other vices he added those of indolence and effeminacy.  From the time that he became king nothing could drag him from the soft life of the palace; in no single instance did he take the field, either against his country’s enemies or his own.  Miserable as was his end, we can scarcely deem him worthy of our pity, since there never lived a man whose misfortunes were more truly brought on him by his own conduct.

The coins of Hormisdas IV. are in no respect remarkable.  The head seems modelled on that of Chosroes, his father, but is younger.  The field of the coin within the border is somewhat unduly crowded with stars and crescents.  Stars and crescents also occur outside the border, replacing the simple crescents of Chosroes, and reproducing the combined stars and crescents of Zamasp.  The legend on the obverse is Auhramazdi afzud, or sometimes Auhramazi afzun; on the reverse are commonly found, besides the usual fire-altar and supporters, a regnal year and a mint-mark.  The regnal years range from one to thirteen; the number of the mint-marks is about thirty. [PLATE XXIII., Fig. 1.]

[Illustration:  PLATE XXIII.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

Accession of Chosroes II. (Eberwiz).  Bahram rejects his Terms.  Contest between Chosroes and Bahram.  Flight of Chosroes.  Short Reign of Bahram (Varahran VI).  Campaign of A.D. 591.  Recovery of the Throne by Chosroes.  Coins of Bahram.

The position of Chosroes II. on his accession was one of great difficulty.  Whether actually guilty of parricide or not, he was at any rate suspected by the greater part of his subjects of complicity in his father’s murder.  A rebel, who was the greatest Persian general of the time, at the head of a veteran army, stood arrayed against his authority.  He had no established character to fall back upon, no merits to plead, nothing in fact to urge on his behalf but that he was the eldest son of his father, the legitimate representative of the ancient line of the Sassanidae.  A revolution had placed him