in these matters disagreed utterly with each other, and one announced that one thing, another that another thing was indicated by this star; but I only write what took place and I leave to each one to judge by the outcome as he wishes.  Straightway a mighty Hunnic army crossing the Danube River fell as a scourge upon all Europe, a thing which had happened many times before, but which had never brought such a multitude of woes nor such dreadful ones to the people of that land.  For from the Ionian Gulf these barbarians plundered everything in order as far as the suburbs of Byzantium.  And they captured thirty-two fortresses in Illyricum, and they carried by storm the city of Cassandria (which the ancients called Potidaea, as far as we know), never having fought against walls before.  And taking with them the money and leading away one hundred and twenty thousand captives, they all retired homeward without encountering any opposition.  In later times too they often came there and brought upon the Romans irreparable calamity.  This same people also assailed the wall of the Chersonesus, where they overpowered those who were defending themselves from the wall, and approaching through the surf of the sea, scaled the fortifications on the so-called Black Gulf; thus they got within the long wall, and falling unexpectedly upon the Romans in the Chersonesus they slew many of them and made prisoners of almost all the survivors.  Some few of them also crossed the strait between Sestus and Abydus, and after plundering the Asiatic country, they returned again to the Chersonesus, and with the rest of the army and all the booty betook themselves to their homes.  In another invasion they plundered Illyricum and Thessaly and attempted to storm the wall at Thermopylae; and since the guards on the walls defended them most valiantly, they sought out the ways around and unexpectedly found the path which leads up the mountain which rises there[3].  In this way they destroyed almost all the Greeks except the Peloponnesians, and then withdrew.  And the Persians not long afterwards broke off the treaty and wrought such harm to the Romans of the East as I shall set forth immediately.

Belisarius, after humbling Vittigis, the king of the Goths and Italians, brought him alive to Byzantium.  And I shall now proceed to tell how the army of the Persians invaded the land of the Romans.  When the Emperor Justinian perceived that Chosroes was eager for war, he wished to offer him some counsel and to dissuade him from the undertaking.  Now it happened that a certain man had come to Byzantium from the city of Daras, Anastasius by name, well known for his sagacity; he it was who had broken the tyranny which had been established recently in Daras.  Justinian therefore wrote a letter and sent it by this Anastasius to Chosroes; and the message of the letter was as follows:  “It is the part of men of discretion and those by whom divine things are treated with due respect, when causes of war arise, and in