It is not surprising that Narses here made a stand, and insisted on commerce being left to flow in the broader channels which it had formed for itself in the course of ages.
Rome thus terminated her first period of struggle with the newly revived monarchy of Persia by a great victory and a great diplomatic success.

If Narses regarded the terms--and by his conduct he would seem to have done so--as moderate under the circumstances, our conclusion must be that the disaster which he had suffered was extreme, and that he knew the strength of Persia to be, for the time, exhausted.

Forced to relinquish his suzerainty over Armenia and Iberia, he saw those countries not merely wrested from himself, but placed under the protectorate, and so made to minister to the strength, of his rival.

Nor was this all.

Rome had gradually been advancing across Mesopotamia and working her way from the Euphrates to the Tigris.