tand on them fell to the
ground with a mighty crash. When this was heard by other Romans also,
who were fighting from the adjoining towers, being utterly unable to
comprehend what had happened, but supposing that the wall at this point
had been destroyed, they beat a hasty retreat. Now many young men of the
populace who in former times had been accustomed to engage in factional
strife with each other in the hippodromes descended into the city from
the fortification wall, but they refused to flee and remained where they
were, while the soldiers with Theoctistus and Molatzes straightway
leaped upon the horses which happened to be ready there and rode away to
the gates, telling the others a tale to the effect that Bouzes had come
with an army and they wished to receive them quickly into the city, and
with them to ward off the enemy. Thereupon many of the men of Antioch
and all the women with their children made a great rush toward the
gates; but since they were crowded by the horses, being in very narrow
quarters, they began to fall down. The soldiers, however, sparing
absolutely no one of those before them, all kept riding over the fallen
still more fiercely than before, and a great many were killed there,
especially about the gates themselves.

But the Persians, with no one opposing them, set ladders against the
wall and mounted with no difficulty. And quickly reaching the
battlements, for a time they were by no means willing to descend, but
they seemed like men looking about them and at a loss what to do,
because, as it seems to me, they supposed that the rough ground was
beset with some ambuscades of the enemy. For the land inside the
fortifications which one traverses immediately upon descending from the
height is an uninhabited tract extending for a great distance and there
are found there rocks which rise to a very great height, and steep
places. But some say that it was by the will of Chosroes that the
Persians hesitated. For when he observed the difficulty of the ground
and saw the soldiers fleeing, he feared lest by reason of some necessity
they should turn back from their retreat and make trouble for the
Persians, and thus become an obstacle, as might well happen, in the way
of his capturing a city which was both ancient and of great importance
and the first of all the cities which the Romans had throughout the East
both in wealth and in size and in population and in beauty and in
prosperity of every kind. Hence