of Ctesiphon, without meeting with any opposition. He might even have
secured the release of the Antiochians, and all the other Romans who
were there in captivity, before returning home.

Furthermore, he was chiefly to blame for the extreme ease with which
Chosroes led his army home from Colchis. I will now relate how this
came to pass. When Chosroes, the son of Cabades, invaded Colchis, with
the result which I have recounted elsewhere, and took Petra, the Medes
nevertheless sustained severe losses, both in battle and owing to the
difficulties of the country; for, as I have said already, Lazica is a
country almost inaccessible, owing to its rocks and precipices. They
had at the same time been attacked by pestilence, which carried off
the greater part of the troops, and many died from want of food and
necessaries. It was at this crisis of affairs that certain men from
Persia came into that country, bringing the news that Belisarius had
beaten Nabedes in a battle near the city of Nisibis, and was pressing
forward; that he had taken the fortress of Sisauranum, and had made
prisoners of Bleschames and eight hundred Persian lancers; that
another corps of Romans under Arethas, the chief of the Saracens, had
been detached to cross the Tigris, and ravage the land to the east of
that river, which up to that time had remained free from invasion.

It happened also that the army of Huns, whom Chosroes had sent into
Roman Armenia, in order, by this diversion, to prevent the Romans from
hindering his expedition against the Lazi, had fallen in with and been
defeated by Valerian, at the head of a Roman army, and almost
annihilated. When this news was brought to the Persians, having been
reduced to desperate straits by their ill success at Lazica, they
feared that, if an army should cut them off in their critical
position, they might all die of hunger amidst the crags and precipices