War Again with Persia

Yazdegerd, king of the Persians, who had never troubled the Christians in his dominions, died, and his son, named Bahram, succeeded him on the throne. This prince gave way to the influence of the magi and persecuted the Christians there harshly, inflicting on them a variety of Persian punishments and tortures. Because of this oppression they were forced to leave their country and take refuge among the Romans, begging them not to let them be wiped out completely. Atticus the bishop received these suppliants with great kindness and did all he could to help them in every possible way, and so he made the facts known to the emperor Theodosius. At the same time another grievance of the Romans against the Persians came to light. The Persians would not send back the laborers in the gold mines who had been hired from among the Romans, and they were also plundering Roman merchants. The ill feeling these things caused was greatly increased by the flight of the Persian Christians into Roman territory. For the Persian king at once sent an embassy to demand the fugitives. But the Romans were by no means willing to hand them over, not only because they wanted to defend those who had come to them as suppliants, but also because they were ready to do anything for the sake of the Christian religion. For this reason they chose to renew the war with the Persians rather than let the Christians be miserably destroyed. So the treaty was broken, and a fierce war followed. [a]

I think it not out of place to give a brief account of this war. The Roman emperor first sent a body of troops under the command of the general Ardaburius. He broke through Armenia into Persia and ravaged one of its provinces, called Azazene. Narsaeus, the Persian general, marched against him with the Persian army, but when they met in battle he was defeated and forced to retreat. Afterward Narsaeus thought it best to make a surprise invasion through Mesopotamia into the Roman territories there, which were unguarded, thinking that in this way he would be revenged on the enemy. But this plan did not escape the notice of the Roman general. So, having plundered Azazene, he too marched in haste into Mesopotamia. As a result Narsaeus, though he had a large army, was kept from invading the Roman provinces. Arriving at Nisibis, a city held by the Persians on the frontier of both empires, Narsaeus sent to Ardaburius, asking that they make arrangements together for carrying on the war and fix a time and place for a battle. But Ardaburius said to the messengers: “Tell Narsaeus that the Roman emperors will not fight when it suits him.”

The emperor, seeing that the Persian was gathering his whole force, raised more troops for his army and put his whole trust in God for the victory. That the emperor gained an immediate benefit from this pious confidence is shown by what followed. While the people of Constantinople were in great alarm and anxious about how the war would end, angels from God appeared to some people in Bithynia who were traveling to Constantinople on their own business. They told them to tell the people not to be afraid, but to pray to God and be sure that the Romans would win, for they said that they themselves had been appointed by God to defend them. When this message spread, it not only comforted the people of the city but made the soldiers braver. With the scene of the war moved, as we have said, from Armenia to Mesopotamia, the Romans shut the Persians up in the city of Nisibis and besieged it. They built wooden towers, moved them up to the walls by machines, and killed great numbers both of those defending the walls and of those who ran to help them.

When Bahram, the Persian monarch, learned that his province of Azazene had been laid waste on the one hand, and that on the other his army was closely besieged in the city of Nisibis, he resolved to march in person with all his forces against the Romans. But dreading Roman courage, he begged the help of the Saracens, who were then ruled by a warlike chief named al-Mundhir. This prince brought with him a large force of Saracen auxiliaries and urged the king of the Persians to fear nothing, for he would soon bring the Romans under his power and deliver Antioch in Syria into his hands. But the outcome did not match these promises. For God struck the minds of the Saracens with a terrible panic. Imagining that the Roman army was falling on them, and finding no other way of escape, they threw themselves, armed as they were, into the river Euphrates, and nearly one hundred thousand of them were drowned in it. Such was the nature of that panic.

The Romans besieging Nisibis, learning that the king of Persia was bringing a great number of elephants with him, became alarmed in their turn. They burned all the machines they had used in the siege and withdrew into their own country. What battles took place afterward; how Areobindus, another Roman general, killed the bravest of the Persians in single combat; by what means Ardaburius destroyed seven Persian commanders in an ambush; and in what way Vitian, another Roman general, defeated what was left of the Saracen forces: all this I think I should pass over, so as not to stray too far from my subject.