ds of the
Persians, unless they should give them all the wealth which they had
inside the fortifications; for only on this condition, he said, would
the army depart. When the envoys heard this, they agreed that they would
purchase peace from Chosroes, if only he would not prescribe impossible
conditions for them: but the outcome of a conflict, they said, was
plainly seen by no one at all before the struggle. For there was never a
war whose outcome might be taken for granted by those who waged it.
Thereupon Chosroes in anger commanded the envoys to be gone with all
speed.

On the eighth day of the siege he formed the design of erecting an
artificial hill against the circuit wall of the city; accordingly he cut
down trees in great numbers from the adjacent districts and, without
removing the leaves, laid them together in a square before the wall, at
a point which no missile from the city could reach; then he heaped an
immense amount of earth right upon the trees and above that threw on a
great quantity of stones, not such as are suitable for building, but cut
at random, and only calculated to raise the hill as quickly as possible
to a great height. And he kept laying on long timbers in the midst of
the earth and the stones, and made them serve to bind the structure
together, in order that as it became high it should not be weak. But
Peter, the Roman general (for he happened to be there with Martinus and
Peranius), wishing to check the men who were engaged in this work, sent
some of the Huns who were under his command against them. And they, by
making a sudden attack, killed a great number; and one of the guardsmen,
Argek by name, surpassed all others, for he alone killed twenty-seven.
From that time on, however, the barbarians kept a careful guard, and
there was no further opportunity for anyone to go out against them. But
when the artisans engaged in this work, as they moved forward, came
within range of missiles, then the Romans offered a most vigorous
resistance from the city wall, using both their slings and their bows
against them. Wherefore the barbarians devised the following plan. They
provided screens of goat's hair cloth, of the kind which are called
Cilician, making them of adequate thickness and height, and attached
them to long pieces of wood which they always set before those who were
working on the "agesta"[22] (for thus the Romans used to call in the
Latin tongue the thing which they were making). Behind t