In Persian Armenia yearnings after independence had asserted themselves during the war with Rome, but when peace was concluded Bahram could again install a vassal king there; the selfish Armenian nobles, however, went to such lengths that the Persians were finally driven to do away with the Armenian monarchy altogether and to convert the country into a province (429), as the Romans had long since done with their portion of it. In this the Persians had the assistance of a strong party among the Armenians themselves, though as a matter of fact the Persian satraps had no less trouble with the barons and priests than with the kings before them. After the death of Bahram (438 or 439) his son Yezdegerd II became king. He persecuted both Christians and Jews, nor is there much to be set to his credit in other respects. He abolished the audiences, on the first day of every month, in which any man of consequence was free to lay grievances or petitions before the king. The story goes that he married his own daughter (though that was no crime in the opinion of the Zoroastrians, who considered such marriages positively meritorious) and afterwards killed her. WAR WITH THE HEPHTHALITES [Sidenote: [457-489 A.D.]] Upon the death of Yezdegerd II (457) a quarrel seems to have broken out immediately between his sons, Hormuzd III, king (that is to say, “prince-satrap”) of Sagastan, and Peroz, who were the children of one mother, Dinak by name. Hormuzd, the elder, held his ground for a while, but at the end of two years Peroz supplanted him by the help of the Hephthalites and the active exertions of Raham, of the noble house of Mihran. He caused three others of his nearest kinsmen to be put to death, as well as his brother. He, again, was hostile to Christians and Jews, but he had political insight enough to favour the conversion of his Christian subjects to the doctrines of Nestorius, which had been banished as archheresy from the Roman Empire. At the synod held at Beth Lapat in the year 483 or 484, the ancient Christian church of the Persian Empire adopted the Nestorian confession; and being thenceforward separated by a great gulf from the Roman Christians, was consequently even less dangerous to the state than it had been before. But, as a matter of fact, Christianity in Persia had never been really much of a menace to the country. The Armenians on the other hand joined the monophysites, who had a large party in the Roman Empire and often had the upper hand there.