Justinian therefore wrote a letter and sent it by this Anastasius to
Chosroes; and the message of the letter was as follows: "It is the part
of men of discretion and those by whom divine things are treated with
due respect, when causes of war arise, and in particular against men who
are in the truest sense friends, to exert all their power to put an end
to them; but it belongs to foolish men and those who most lightly bring
on themselves the enmity of Heaven to devise occasions for war and
insurrection which have no real existence. Now to destroy peace and
enter upon war is not a difficult matter, since the nature of things is
such as to make the basest activities easy for the most dishonourable
men. But when they have brought about war according to their intention,
to return again to peace is for men, I think, not easy. And yet thou
chargest me with writing letters which were not written with any dark
purpose, and thou hast now made haste to interpret these with arbitrary
judgment, not in the sense in which we conceived them when we wrote
them, but in a way which will be of advantage to thee in thy eagerness
to carry out thy plans not without some pretext. But for us it is
possible to point out that thy Alamoundaras recently overran our land
and performed outrageous deeds in time of peace, to wit, the capture of
towns, the seizure of property, the massacre and enslavement of such a
multitude of men, concerning which it will be thy duty not to blame us,
but to defend thyself. For the crimes of those who have done wrong are
made manifest to their neighbours by their acts, not by their thoughts.
But even with these things as they are, we have still decided to hold to
peace, but we hear that thou in thy eagerness to make war upon the
Romans art fabricating accusations which do not belong to us at all.
Natural enough, this; for while those who are eager to preserve the
present order of things repel even those charges against their friends
which are most pressing, those who are not satisfied with established
friendships exert themselves to provide even pretexts which do not