both of us, and the other in order that we may check your inroads.  When lately we made a protest regarding these matters and demanded that one of two things should be done by you, either that the army sent to the Caspian Gates should be sent by both of us, or that the city of Daras should be dismantled, you refused to understand what was said, but saw fit to strengthen your plot against the Persians by a greater injury, if we remember correctly the building of the fort in Mindouos[21].  And even now the Romans may choose peace, or they may elect war, by either doing justice to us or going against our rights.  For never will the Persians lay down their arms, until the Romans either help them in guarding the gates, as is just and right, or dismantle the city of Daras.”  With these words Cabades dismissed the ambassador, dropping the hint that he was willing to take money from the Romans and have done with the causes of the war.  This was reported to the emperor by Rufinus when he came to Byzantium. [531 A.D.] Hermogenes also came thither not long afterwards, and the winter came to a close; thus ended the fourth year of the reign of the Emperor Justinian.

XVII

At the opening of spring a Persian army under the leadership of Azarethes invaded the Roman territory.  They were fifteen thousand strong, all horsemen.  With them was Alamoundaras, son of Saccice, with a very large body of Saracens.  But this invasion was not made by the Persians in the customary manner; for they did not invade Mesopotamia, as formerly, but the country called Commagene of old, but now Euphratesia, a point from which, as far as we know, the Persians never before conducted a campaign against the Romans.  But why the land was called Mesopotamia and why the Persians refrained from making their attack at this point is what I now propose to relate.

There is a mountain in Armenia which is not especially precipitous, two-and-forty stades removed from Theodosiopolis and lying toward the north from it.  From this mountain issue two springs, forming immediately two rivers, the one on the right called the Euphrates, and the other the Tigris.  One of these, the Tigris, descends, with no deviations and with no tributaries except small ones emptying into it, straight toward the city of Amida.  And continuing into the country which lies to the north of this city it enters the land of Assyria.  But the Euphrates at its beginning flows for a short distance, and is then immediately lost to sight as it goes on; it does not, however, become subterranean, but a very strange thing happens.  For the water is covered by a bog of great depth, extending about fifty stades in length and twenty in breadth; and reeds grow in this mud in great abundance.  But the earth there is of such a hard sort that it seems to those who chance upon it to be nothing else than solid ground, so that both pedestrians and horsemen travel over it without any fear.  Nay more, even