During the following year, owing to the prevalence of a fatal epidemic, Chosroes remained inactive; but the Romans penetrated into Persarmenia, where they carried on the war with little success, and sustained at least one decisive defeat. In 544, however, the Shah again emerged from his boundaries, this time resolved on the capture of Edessa, a city which affirmed itself to possess a direct guarantee from the Deity that it would never be taken by an enemy, and a passage to that effect from a letter, said to have been written by Jesus to Abgar, a former ruler, was inscribed over the gates. But Chosroes was ambitious of disproving the validity of this safeguard, and, therefore, set about beleaguering the city in a manner which should exclude the possibility of being unsuccessful. His ardour in this undertaking was sustained by the fanaticism of the Magi, who, having adored Jesus at his birth, ever afterwards regarded him as an impostor most obnoxious to their religion. A preliminary skirmish, however, having turned out unfavourably for his arms, he began to dread the disgrace of failure, and proposed a ransom; but the amount was so exorbitant that the citizens elected rather to endure a siege. Preparations for capture were, therefore, pushed on energetically; and first of all the Persians began to construct an immense quadrangular mound, from the flat top of which they intended to dominate the city with their missiles. Trunks of trees, stones, and earth were congested together, in the beginning at a distance beyond bow-shot from the walls, but as the work progressed towards the town, the builders became attainable by the arrows and engines of the garrison. The discharge was at first effective, especially that of flaming darts, but the Orientals soon erected huge screens made of hides, under cover of which they were able to work in safety. The citizens now became seriously alarmed, and sent a further deputation to Chosroes, but in vain, fifty thousand pounds of gold (£4,000,000) being the lowest price he would accept to raise the siege. All hope of an accommodation being now lost, the engineers of the city began to devise means to counteract the hostile operations. First they tried to raise a mound, conjoined to the walls, to oppose that of the enemy, but the task proved to be beyond their powers, and so they desisted. Then they bored a tunnel, which reached as far as the centre of the mound, designing to destroy it by fire from below, but the Persian sentinels heard the excavators at work, and the scheme was frustrated by a counterboring. Another tunnel, which only attained the proximate part of the mound, was achieved with better success, and a cavern was hollowed out, into which a vast quantity of dry wood impregnated with oil, sulphur, and bitumen was introduced. Here a fire was kept burning constantly by fresh supplies, whilst the enemy's attention was diverted from the rising smoke by an incessant discharge of blazing arrows and pitch-pots. After some days, however, as the fire pervaded the viscera of the mound, volumes of smoke betrayed the real nature of the conflagration. The Persians then essayed to extinguish it with earth and water, but, failing to check it, they decided to abandon this siege work. A surprise attack by night with ladders was the next manœuvre, but the Romans were too vigilant, and the coup only led to a slaughterous repulse. During the whole period of the beleaguerment, sallies were regularly organized by the garrison, and generally with considerable loss to the besiegers. Finally Chosroes nerved himself to make a supreme effort with all his powers to storm the city. With this object in view, myriads of adobes were moulded and laid over the top of the smouldering mound. The assault was begun in the early morning, and at first bid fair to be successful, the defenders of the wall being comparatively few; but, as the day wore on, the whole effective population—men, women, and children, crowded to the battlements. Then improvised projectiles of every available substance were hurled, cauldrons of oil were brought up and fired along the top of the wall, and, with the aid of suitable sprinklers, drops of the burning liquid were rained down on the escaladers. After a prolonged and vigorous attack, the besiegers retired and informed the Shah that they could make no headway. He raged, and drove them back again; they returned to the assault with reckless fury; ladders, towers, and engines of every description were rushed up to the walls, but for the second time the ceaseless torrent of missiles put them to flight. Chosroes then resigned himself and left his post of observation, while the townspeople hurled their taunts of defiance after his retreating figure. The siege of Edessa had failed; and, with the slight compensation of five hundred pounds of gold (£20,000), he broke up his camp and departed.
Shortly after Justinian's legates again convened Chosroes and in 545 he granted a truce for five years in exchange for two thousand pounds of gold (£80,000), and a Greek physician, whose skill had formerly relieved him from a painful malady.[576] Yet such was his ill faith that when he sent a plenipotentiary to conclude the pact at Constantinople, he commissioned him to attempt the capture of Dara, while on his way, by a stratagem. But for the wariness of the inhabitants of that fortress, the emissary would have gained admission with a large retinue, fired the houses in the night, and opened the gates to the army of Nisibis, which was to lie in waiting outside the walls.
Notwithstanding the establishment of peaceful relations, a desultory warfare was still carried on in Lazica. A twelve-month's experience of Persian domination convinced the Lazi that there was something even worse than Byzantine extortion, and they prayed to be received again into the fold of a nation which was at least Christian like themselves. Nor could the Romans endure the loss of Petra, but sent an expeditionary force into the country to retake it. They were opposed by a Persian army, and for many years the principality was the scene of numerous petty successes and defeats. Chosroes imported a large quantity of material for the purpose of building a fleet on the Euxine, but it was suddenly consumed by lightning, whence it happened that the command of the sea in these regions was never obtained by the Persians.
Intermittently the siege of Petra was pressed for eight years before the stronghold again came into the hands of the Byzantines (551). The successful general was Bessas, who, though above seventy years of age, was the first to ascend the scaling ladders at the last assault. The defence of the fortress had been persisted in by the Persians with extraordinary fortitude; and out of seven hundred and thirty men of the garrison, who were taken prisoners, it was found that only eighteen had not received a wound. Five hundred of the survivors took refuge in the citadel, and in spite of an earnest exhortation by Bessas, preferred death by fire to surrender; whence all of these perished in the flames with which the Romans consumed the buildings. The fortress contained a store of provisions calculated to last for five years, and the reserve of arms and armour would have sufficed to fit out each man of the garrison five times over. But the captors were chiefly amazed at seeing a copious flow issuing from an aqueduct, although every channel of water supply had apparently been cut off. In the only possible track a surface conduit had been divided, but for long afterwards no signs could be detected of a lack of water in the town. Evidently there must be a second supply; they dug down and came on an underground conduit beneath the first, and that also was severed. Only after the capture of the fortress was it discovered that at a still greater depth a third watercourse for the supply of the inhabitants had been constructed. Petra was now abolished by Bessas, who razed every building to the ground level, and departed with his prisoners to the capital.[577]
Two years after the beginning of this war an outbreak of bubonic plague, the first circumstantially recorded in history, was manifested in the Eastern Hemisphere. The phenomena of the disease were first noted at Pelusium, whence it spread throughout Egypt on the one hand, and Asia Minor on the other. In the spring of the next year (543) it reached Constantinople, where it raged for four months. At first few persons were stricken, but the epidemic became intensified gradually, until at the height of its virulence as many as ten thousand victims died in one day. The cessation of all normal activities of social life, and the changed aspect of the Imperial capital have been described by Procopius,[578] who was present there at the time. Deserted streets, except for those hurrying to bury the dead without religious rites; the oppletion of all ordinary sepulchres and cemeteries; the digging of graves in every available patch of ground in the suburbs; the ultimate difficulty of disposing of the corpses by any recognized method, when some were projected into the sea, and others were hurled down the wall towers of Sycae, the roofs having been temporarily removed for the purpose; the stench afterwards pervading the city when the wind set from that quarter; the wailing of the bereaved and the fearful who betook themselves to the churches; the opulent households in which sometimes a few slaves were the sole survivors of the family; the dying left untended and those who fell dead in the thoroughfares while conveying their relatives to the tomb; finally the obliteration of the feud between the Circus factions, and their dejectedly working in harmony for the removal of their own dead and those of others; such were the main features which denoted the state of hopeless desolation prevailing during this calamitous visitation.
The symptoms of this plague have been described by the contemporary historian with an accuracy which leaves little to be added by a modern physician having a clinical acquaintance with the disease. In typical cases the victim at some unexpected moment felt a sharp stab, almost invariably in the groin or the axilla; whence the superstitious declared that they had seen a demon who at the critical instant approached and struck them. Fever, with the development of a bubo at the sensitive spot, rapidly set in; coma or delirium then supervened, and death occurred in three or four days. Black patches often appeared on the body, and were premonitory of an immediately fatal ending. Among the worst signs, vomiting or spitting of blood was also observed. In the most violent attacks the patient without warning fell down in contortions and died before other symptoms became apparent. Some rushed madly through the street, others flung themselves from windows or roofs. The disease was not contagious, and those who handled the infected bodies were not on that account more liable to be seized. Recovery was forecasted by ripening and suppuration of the buboes, whilst indolence of those tumours was surely indicative of a fatal termination. The medical faculty dissected the corpses with assiduity, but found neither explanation nor remedy. In their prognosis also they were often wrong, some recovering whom they had given up, and others dying, of whom they had entertained the best hopes. Having once manifested itself, the plague became endemic, and more than half a century afterwards continued to be one of the chief causes of mortality.[579]
[564] Procopius, De Bel. Pers., i, 26.
[565] Procopius, De Bel. Pers., ii, 9. The veneration of the Persians for truth has been referred to in a former chapter, but in actual fact deceitfulness was a prominent characteristic of the nation. Thus Horace alludes to the "lying Persians" ("infidi Persae," Od., iv, 15) as the verdict of common experience. Truth was rare and precious in Persia, and esteemed accordingly. The opinions of modern travellers coincide. See Müller, Encycl. Brit., xxii, p. 663; cf. Palgrave, Ibid., ii, p. 248.
[566] In this rebellion they managed to kill Sittas, Theodora's brother-in-law, and, it was said, by the hand of Artabanes, who joined the Imperial service soon after, and so much distinguished himself in Africa. See p. 522.
[567] Procopius, De Bel. Pers., ii, 2, 3, whence the narrative proceeds as below.