Res Gestae

The emperor was on the point of leaving the spot, when a trustworthy informant reported that in some dark and hidden pits near the walls of the destroyed city, such as are numerous in those parts, a band of the enemy was treacherously lying in wait, intending to rush out unexpectedly and attack the rear of our army.

At once a band of foot soldiers of tried valour was sent to dislodge them, and when they could neither force an entrance through the openings nor lure to battle those hidden within, .they gathered straw and faggots and piled them before the entrances of the caves. The smoke from this, becoming thicker the narrower the space which it penetrated, killed some by suffocation; others scorched by the blast of fires, were forced to come out and met a swift death; and so, when all had fallen victims to steel or flame, our men quickly returned to their standards. Thus a great and

After these glorious deeds we passed over a series of bridges, made necessary by the union of many streams, and came to two fortresses built with special care. Here a son of the Persian king, who had come from Ctesiphon with some magnates and an armed force, tried to prevent Count Victor, who was leading our van, from crossing the river; but on seeing the throng of soldiers that followed, he retreated.

Then going on, we came to groves and fields rich with the bloom of many kinds of fruits; there we found a palace built in Roman style, with which we were so pleased that we left it untouched.

There was also in that same region an extensive round tract, enclosed by a strong fence and containing the wild beasts that were kept for the king’s entertainment: lions with flowing manes, boars with bristling shoulders, and bears savage beyond all manner of madness (as they usually are in Persia), and other choice animals of enormous size; our cavalry burst the fastenings of the gates and butchered them all with hunting-spears and showers of missiles.

This district is fruitful in fields of grain and in cultivation.[*](The text is very uncertain. There was probably a lacuna between qui and bus. ) Not far from it is Coche, which they call Seleucia; there a camp

Here too Nabdates, who (as I have said) was dragged with eighty men from a hiding-place in a captured city,[*](Maiozamalcha; see ch. 4, 26, above.) was burned alive, because early in the beginning of the siege he had secretly promised to betray the town, but had fought most vigorously, and after obtaining an unhoped-for pardon had gone to such a pitch of insolence as to assail Ormisda with every kind of insult.

We had gone on some distance, when we were shocked by a sad misfortune. For while three cohorts of light-armed skirmishers were fighting with a band of Persians which had burst forth from the suddenly opened gates of a town,[*](Perhaps Sabatha (Zosimus).) others who had sallied forth from the opposite side of the river, cut off and butchered the pack-animals that followed us, along with a few foragers who were carelessly roaming about.