Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/52

 general of the Persian wing in action fell before the lance of one of the leaders of the Roman reserves and disappeared from his saddle. A panic then seized on the Orientals, and they thought of nothing but escape by flight. From all sides the Romans rushed to make an onslaught on them, they became hemmed in by a circle of steel, and were slaughtered without resistance to the number of five thousand. A general rout of the Persian army ensued; the infantry, on seeing the destruction of the cavalry, threw away their shields and fled, but they were quickly overtaken, so that a great majority of them perished. Belisarius and his colleague, however, fearing lest the reaction of despair in so great a host might lead to some disaster, recalled their forces as soon as they judged the defeat of the enemy to be complete. Such was the victory of Dara, the achievement of which appears to have been due mainly to the military talents of Belisarius, whose age at this date (530) was probably under thirty. For the rest of this war the Persians always avoided fighting a pitched battle with the Romans.

During the succeeding summer desultory hostilities were carried on in Armenia, where, as a rule, the Byzantines had the advantage; and two fortified posts of some importance, Bolum and Pharangium, in the Persian division of that" *