emed
a difficult and very notable thing to have a sufficiency of bread or of
anything else; so that with some of the sick it appeared that the end of
life came about sooner than it should have come by reason of the lack of
the necessities of life. And, to put all in a word, it was not possible
to see a single man in Byzantium clad in the chlamys[18], and especially
when the emperor became ill (for he too had a swelling of the groin),
but in a city which held dominion over the whole Roman empire every man
was wearing clothes befitting private station and remaining quietly at
home. Such was the course of the pestilence in the Roman empire at large
as well as in Byzantium. And it fell also upon the land of the Persians
and visited all the other barbarians besides.

XXIV

[545 A.D.] Now it happened that Chosroes had come from Assyria to a
place toward the north called Adarbiganon, from which he was planning to
make an invasion into the Roman domain through Persarmenia. In that
place is the great sanctuary of fire, which the Persians reverence above
all other gods. There the fire is guarded unquenched by the Magi, and
they perform carefully a great number of sacred rites, and in particular
they consult an oracle on those matters which are of the greatest
importance. This is the fire which the Romans worshipped under the name
of Hestia[19] in ancient times. There someone who had been sent from
Byzantium to Chosroes announced that Constantianus and Sergius would
come before him directly as envoys to arrange the treaty. Now these two
men were both trained speakers and exceedingly clever; Constantianus was
an Illyrian by birth, and Sergius was from the city of Edessa in
Mesopotamia. And Chosroes remained quiet expecting these men. But in the
course of the journey thither Constantianus became ill and much time was
consumed; in the meantime it came about that the pestilence fell upon
the Persians. For this reason Nabedes, who at that time held the office
of general in Persarmenia, sent the priest of the Christians in Dubios
by direction of the king to Valerianus, the general in Armenia, in order
to reproach the envoys for their tardiness and to urge the Romans with
all zeal toward peace. And he came with his brother to Armenia, and,
meeting Valerianus, declared that he himself, as a Christian, was
favourably disposed toward the Romans, and that the king Chosroes always
followed his advice in every matter; so that if the ambassa