The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

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EVAGRIUS
armies, as normally happens. At night Chosroes lit many ¢res and
prepared for a night battle. As the Romans had two camps, he attacked
those on the northern side in the depths of the night. Since they withdrew
at this unexpected surprise, he attacked the nearby city of Melitene,
which was undefended and deserted by its inhabitants; and after
burning everything he prepared to cross the river Euphrates. But when
the combined Roman army followed, fearing for his own safety he
mounted an elephant and crossed the river, while the greater number of
his men were buried in the river’s currents. On realizing that they had
been drowned he set o¡ and departed.
And so Chosroes, after paying this extreme penalty for such great
insolence towards the Romans, together with the survivors reached the
eastern regions where he had the truce, so that nobody might attack
him. 56 But Justinian with his entire army invaded the Persian kingdom
and spent the whole winter season there, with nobody causing him any
trouble whatsoever. Then he returned at about the summer solstice,
with no losses at all from his army, and spent the summer right on the
frontiers in great prosperity and glory. 57
15 A manifold grief overwhelmed Chosroes, who was distraught and
helpless and submerged by the ebb and £ow of anguish; it miserably
deprived him of his life, after he had set up as an everlasting memorial
of his £ight a law which he made that [212] a Persian king should no
longer campaign against the Romans. His son Hormisdas became king,
whom I must now leave aside, since the next matters summon me to
them and eagerly await the £ow of the account. 58
56 John of Ephesus (EH vi.9) records that Khusro £ed across Arzanene on his elephant,
and that a special road through the mountains of Carduchia had to be cut for the animal.
57 Justinian raided from Armenia (hence not covered by the truce) as far as the Caspian
Sea, and threatened one of the Persian royal capitals, probably in Azerbaijan (Theophylact
iii.15.1^2); after his return to Roman territory in 577, negotiations were pursued in order to
convert the truce into a permanent peace, but these discussions stalled when the Persian
general Tamkhusro defeated Justinian, whose troops had become over-con¢dent, in an encounter
in Armenia. See Whitby, Maurice 267^8.
58 Evagrius has again compressed the chronology of events. Khusro died in February or
March 579, to be succeeded by Hormizd IV. According to Agathias (iv.29.8^10), Khusro’s
death had been brought on by the distressing sight of the Romans ravaging Arzanene the
previous year, which was visible from his summer retreat in Carduchia.
The law about royal campaigning is also recorded by Theophylact (iii.14.11), who says
that it prohibited all foreign expeditions by the king, and John of Ephesus (EH vi.9),