Theodosiopolis and Amida were taken by the Persians, though the black ramparts of "Kara Amid"[1] all but foiled King Kobad. Both were returned at the peace, when (in flat defiance of the terms of it) Anastasius built the great fortress that was to balance lost Nisibis; Daras, where the ruined walls and vast indestructible grain-pits remain till this day.
The war with Rome did not disturb Christians in Persia. They were practically separated from the Church of Constantinople; though it would be very difficult to say exactly what the formal relations between the two bodies were at the time, or what was the theological status of either. Acacius had been admitted to communion; but the Church in the Roman Empire, so long as the Henoticon was its confession of faith, was officially Monophysite notwithstanding. No cut-and-dried theory will fit the anomalous facts. What most concerned the Assyrian Christians was that they had achieved the result they desired—freedom from persecution during Romo-Persian quarrels. Questions of inter-communion might stand over until the Byzantine Church should know its own mind.
During the war Babai the Patriarch died; and his successor, Silas, was duly chosen and consecrated, a fact that shows how free from all risk of persecution the Church was at the moment. He too was married—to a wife who had a tongue and who ruled him, says Bar-Hebræus—and, according
- ↑ "Black Amida." This is still the Turkish name for Diarbekr, whose basalt walls are largely of Roman building. Kobad was so discouraged by the resistance of the town, that he offered to raise the siege, if a small ransom was paid, "to save his face." The over-confident garrison sent in a bill for the vegetables consumed during the siege, and the women mocked him from the ramparts. Kobad persevered and, shortly after, an unguarded tower gave him entry (Zach. Mitylene, vii. 4).
