The Persians Defeated a Second Time

Now the emperor of the Romans, who lived at Constantinople, knew well that God had plainly given him the victory. Yet he was so kindly that, although his forces had been successful in the war, he still wanted to make peace. To that end he sent Helion, a man in whom he had the greatest confidence, with a commission to conclude a peace treaty with the Persians. Helion arrived in Mesopotamia, at the place where the Romans had dug a trench for their own protection, and from there he sent ahead of him as his deputy Maximin, an eloquent man who was an associate of Ardaburius, the commander-in-chief of the army, to make the first arrangements about the terms of peace. When Maximin came before the Persian king, he said he had been sent to him on this matter not by the Roman emperor but by his generals. For this war, he said, was not even known to the emperor, and if he did know of it, he would think it of little importance. [a]

The ruler of Persia had gladly decided to receive the embassy, because his troops were suffering from a shortage of provisions. But then the corps among them known by the name of “the Immortals” came to him. This is a body of brave men, about ten thousand strong. They advised the king not to listen to any proposal of peace until they had made an attack on the Romans, who, they said, had now grown extremely careless. The king approved their advice. He ordered the ambassador to be imprisoned with a guard set over him, and he allowed the Immortals to carry out their plan against the Romans. So when they reached the appointed place, they divided themselves into two bands, intending to surround part of the Roman army. The Romans saw only one body of Persians approaching and prepared to meet it; they had not seen the other division, because it rushed out to battle so suddenly. But just as the fighting was about to begin, divine Providence so arranged it that another division of the Roman army, under the general Procopius, came out from behind a hill. Seeing their comrades in danger, they attacked the Persians from the rear. So those who a little before had surrounded the Romans were now surrounded themselves. The Romans destroyed these in a short time. Then they turned on those who had burst out of the ambush, and in the same way they killed every one of them with javelins. In this way those whom the Persians called “the Immortals” were all shown to be mortal. Christ took this vengeance on the Persians because they had shed the blood of so many of his devout worshipers.

When the king of the Persians was told of the disaster, he pretended not to know what had happened. He ordered the embassy to be admitted and said to the ambassador: “I agree to peace, not as giving way to the Romans, but to please you, whom I have found to be the most sensible of all the Romans.” So ended the war that had been undertaken because of the suffering Christians in Persia. It ended in the consulship of the two Augusti, the thirteenth of Honorius and the tenth of Theodosius, in the fourth year of the three hundredth Olympiad. And with it ended the persecution that had been stirred up in Persia against the Christians.