"Let us go back to our own country!"
The chiefs rejoiced in secret; the Tuscan augurs openly triumphed. After the burning of the ships there had been a general insurrection. And now not only the Galileans but the Olympians and Hellenists were persuaded that a curse was on the Emperor's head, and that the Furies were pursuing him. When he walked through the camp talk would cease and people edge away from him in fear. Sibylline books and the Book of Revelation, Tuscan wizards, Christian prophecies, gods, and angels, joined forces to crush the common foe. The Emperor then announced that he would lead his men homewards northward through the fertile provinces of Apolloniatis and Adiabene. According to this plan of retreat, while retaining a hope of forming a junction with the troops of Procopius and Sebastian, Julian consoled himself with the thought that he was keeping within the borders of Persia, and that he might still encounter Sapor's army, deliver battle, and win a decisive victory.
The Persians were no longer visible. Desiring to weaken the Romans before a crushing attack, they set on fire their own rich champaigns of barley and wheat, and destroyed every store and granary in the country.
Julian's soldiers marched through a black desert, still smoking with traces of fire.
Famine soon set in.
In order to augment the invaders' distress the Persians had broken the canal-dykes and flooded the fields, being aided in this endeavour by brooks and torrents which had overflowed their courses owing to the melting of the snow on the Armenian mountains. The flood dried up quickly under the burning rays of the June sun, but left the warm soil coated with slimy mud. Asphyxiating vapours and the bitter odour of ashes and of rotting vegetation loaded the air every night, and befouled the drinking water, the food, and even the rags of the soldiers. Myriads of insects rose from corrupted marshes. Mosquitoes, venomous horse-flies, rose in clouds round the beasts of burden and fastened themselves on the men. Their subtle hum went on night and day. Maddened by stings, the horses died or stampeded, the oxen broke their traces and overturned the wagons. After exhausting marches through defiles and fords the soldiers obtained no rest; tents were no refuge against the insects, and to get any sleep the men had to wrap their heads in stifling cloaks, while the bites of a certain small transparent dung-coloured fly produced swellings and boils which gradually became a horrible purulent plague. During the last days of the march the sun was invisible. The low, dense, stifling sky was a white cloth of cloud; and its motionless glare still more painful to the eyes than the naked sun.
And so they kept marching, wasted, weak, with hung head and feeble step, day after day, between the implacable sky and the black, burnt earth.
"Surely," they thought, "Anti-Christ, the man apostate from God, must have intentionally led them into this accursed place, to leave them to their doom." Some murmured, "Curse the generals!" but incoherently, as in a dream. Others kept praying and whining like sick children, begging a crust of bread or a mouthful of wine from their companions. Many from weakness dropped and died on the road.
The Emperor ordered the last rations kept for himself and for his staff to be distributed among the famished rank and file. He contented himself with a thin soup of flour and suet, a fare from which the meanest soldier would have revolted. Thanks to extreme temperance, he felt continually full of nervous excitement, and at the same time a lightness of body, as if he had wings. This lightness sustained him and increased his strength tenfold. He attempted not to think of the future. But to return to Antioch or Tarsus, defeated, and to submit to Galilean ridicule, that he certainly would never endure.
One night the soldiers were resting, the north wind having driven off the flies. Oil, flour, and wine, from the last Imperial supply, had assuaged their hunger. The hope of return gradually revived. The camp became silent. Julian withdrew to his tent. Now he was wont almost to dispense with sleep, or if he slept at all, it was towards daybreak. If by chance profound slumber overtook him, he would wake terrified, with drops of cold sweat on his forehead. He had need of full possession of consciousness to stifle the dull pain gnawing at his soul.