The Siege of Nisibis and Bishop James

When Sapor, king of Persia, made war on the Romans, Constantius gathered his forces and marched to Antioch. But the enemy were driven off, not by the Roman army, but by the one whom the godly in the Roman army worshiped as their God. I shall now tell how the victory was won. [a]

Nisibis, which some call Antioch in Mygdonia, lies on the border between the realms of Persia and of Rome. In Nisibis, James, whom I named just now, was at once bishop, guardian and commander in chief. He was a man who shone with the grace of a truly apostolic character. His extraordinary and memorable miracles I have told fully in my Religious History, and I think it unnecessary and out of place to list them again. [b]

One, however, I will record, because it bears on the subject before us. The city James governed was then in the hands of the Romans, and it was besieged by the Persian army. The blockade went on for seventy days. City-takers and many other siege engines were brought up to the walls. The town was ringed with a palisade and a trench, but it still held out. The river Mygdonius flows through the middle of the town. At last the Persians dammed its stream a good distance upriver, and raised its banks on both sides so as to shut the water in. When they saw that a great mass of water had collected and was already beginning to spill over the dam, they suddenly let it loose against the wall like a battering engine. The blow was tremendous. The ramparts could not stand it, but gave way and fell. The same thing happened on the other side of the circuit of the walls, where the Mygdonius flows out; that wall too could not withstand the shock and was swept away. As soon as Sapor saw this, he expected to take the rest of the city. All that day he waited for the mud to dry and the river to become passable. The next day he attacked in full force, expecting to enter the city through the breaches that had been made. But he found the wall built up again on both sides, and all his labor wasted. For that holy man, through prayer, had filled both the troops and the rest of the townspeople with courage. They built the walls, held out against the engines, and beat off the advancing enemy. And he did all this without going near the walls, but by calling on the Lord of all inside the church. Sapor was not only astounded at how fast the walls had been built, but awed by another sight. He saw standing on the battlements one who looked like a king, all ablaze with a purple robe and a crown. He supposed this was the Roman emperor, and threatened his attendants with death for not reporting that the emperor was present. But they firmly maintained that their report had been true, and that Constantius was at Antioch. Then he understood the meaning of the vision and cried out, “Their God is fighting for the Romans.” In his rage the wretched man flung a javelin into the air, though he knew he could not hit a being without a body; he simply could not curb his passion. Then the excellent Ephraim, the best writer among the Syrians, begged the divine James to go up on the wall, look at the barbarians, and let fly at them the darts of his curse. So the divine man agreed and climbed up into a tower. But when he saw the countless host, he called down no other curse than that mosquitoes and gnats might be sent upon them, so that by means of these tiny creatures they might learn the might of the Protector of the Romans. His prayer was followed by clouds of mosquitoes and gnats. They filled the hollow trunks of the elephants and the ears and nostrils of the horses and the other animals. Finding the attack of these little creatures past bearing, the animals broke their bridles, unseated their riders and threw the ranks into confusion. The Persians abandoned their camp and fled headlong. So the wretched king learned, by a light and kindly punishment, the power of the God who protects the godly. He marched his army home again, and for the whole harvest of the siege he reaped not triumph but disgrace. [e]