Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/475

 he was always anxious and watchful, and therefore he was continually subject to trifling illnesses.

8. Such was the course of events which took place in the western provinces of the empire.

§1. King of Persia, the aged Sapor, who from the very commencement of his reign had been addicted to the love of plunder, after the death of the Emperor Julian, and the disgraceful treaty of peace subsequently made, for a short time seemed with his people to be friendly to us; but presently he trampled under foot the agreement which he had made with Jovian, and poured a body of troops into Armenia to annex that country to his own dominions, as if the whole of the former arrangements had been abolished.

2. At first he contented himself with various tricks, intrigues, and deceits, inflicting some trifling injuries on the nation which unanimously resisted him, tampering with some of the nobles and satraps, and making sudden inroads into the districts belonging to others.

3. Afterwards by a system of artful cajolery fortified by perjury, he got their king Arsaces into his hands, having invited him to a banquet, when he ordered him to be seized and conducted to a secret chamber behind, where his eyes were put out, and he was loaded with silver chains, which in that country is looked upon as a solace under punishment for men of rank, trifling though it be; then he removed him from his country to a fortress called Agabana, where he applied to him the torture, and finally put him to death.

4. After this, in order that his perfidy might leave nothing unpolluted, having expelled Sauromaces, whom the authority of the Romans had made governor of Hiberia, he conferred the government of that district on a man of the name of Aspacuras, even giving him a diadem, to mark the insult offered to the decision of our emperors.

5. And after these infamous actions he committed the charge of Armenia to an eunuch named Cylaces, and to Artabannes, a couple of deserters whom he had received some time before (one of them having been prefect of that