Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/407

 so far as to reach the bank, were either slain like sheep by the Saracens or Persians (because, as we stated some time back, the Germans had driven them out), or sent to a distance to be sold for slaves.

2. But when the trumpets openly gave the signal for crossing the river, it was dreadful to see with what ardour every individual hastened to rush into this danger, preferring himself to all his comrades, in the desire of avoiding the many dangers and distresses behind him. Some tried to guide the beasts who were swimming about at random, with hurdles hurriedly put together; others, seated on bladders, and others, being driven by necessity to all kinds of expedients, sought to pass through the opposing waves by crossing them obliquely.

3.  The emperor himself with a few others crossed over in the small boats, which we said were saved when the fleet was burnt, and then sent the same vessels backwards and forwards till our whole body was brought across. And at length all of us, except such as were drowned, reached the opposite bank of the river, being saved amid our difficulties by the favour of the Supreme Deity.

4.  While we were still oppressed with the fear of impending disasters, we learnt from information brought in by our outposts that the Persians were throwing a bridge over the river some way off, at a point out of our sight, in order that while all ideas of war were put an end to on our side by the ratification of the treaty of peace, they might come upon our invalids as they proceeded carelessly onwards, and on the animals exhausted with fatigue. But when they found their purpose discovered, they relinquished their base design.

5. Being now relieved from this suspicion, we hastened on by rapid marches, and approached Hatra, an ancient town in the middle of a desert, which had been long since abandoned, though at different times those warlike emperors, Trajan and Severus, had attacked it with a view to its destruction, but had been almost destroyed with their armies, as we have related in our history of their exploits.

6. And as we now learnt that over the vast plain before us for seventy miles in that arid region no water could be found but such as was brackish and fetid, and no kind of food