Henceforward, the history of the long contest between the two great empires—“the eyes,” as the Persian ambassador told Galerius, “of the civilized world[781],” is the record of almost uninterrupted advance on the part of Persia and of continual retreat on the side of Rome. The patriotic enthusiasm of a Julian, and the military genius of a Belisarius, aided by the dynastic revolutions common among Oriental nations, might for a time arrest the progress of the conquering Persians; but, bit by bit, the Asiatic provinces slipped out of the grasp of the European masters of Constantinople. In 603 A.D., it looked as if Persia were at length in the position to deliver the final blow in a war which had lasted for more than five centuries. By the invasion of Chosroes and his successive captures of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Egypt, it seemed as if the Persians had restored the world-empire of Cambyses and Darius; but the Persians then discovered, as Xerxes had done a millennium earlier, how dangerous it is for Orientals, even when flushed by conquest, to press Europeans too far. The Roman Emperor Heraclius, who never before or afterwards gave much proof of military or political capacity, from his besieged capital of Constantinople collected an army with which he dashed into Persia in a manner worthy of Alexander himself. After six brilliant campaigns he dictated to the Persians a triumphant peace in the very heart of their empire[782]. A few years later, and its shattered and disorganized remains fell an easy prey to the Mahommedan invaders. The effect of this long rivalry might have been expected to produce in the Romans during its continuance a hearty dislike of the customs and institutions of the nation opposed to them; but almost the exact contrary was the result. It may be argued that Rome’s proved skill in government was in no small measure due to her ready adoption of all that seemed to her admirable in the nations that she overcame. Or it may be that the influence which the memory of Alexander exercised over all those who succeeded to his empire led them to imitate him in his assumption of Persian manners. The fact remains that, long before the division of the Roman Empire into East and West, the Romans displayed a taste for Oriental luxury and magnificence which seems entirely at variance with the simplicity and austerity of the republican conquerors of Carthage. It is hardly too much to say that while Alexander’s conscious aim was to make Asia Greek, the Romans, on possessing themselves of his Asiatic conquests, allowed themselves to become to a great extent “Medized,” and showed an unexpected admiration for the habits and culture of Alexander’s Persian subjects.