and falling unexpectedly upon the Romans in the
Chersonesus they slew many of them and made prisoners of almost all the
survivors. Some few of them also crossed the strait between Sestus and
Abydus, and after plundering the Asiatic country, they returned again to
the Chersonesus, and with the rest of the army and all the booty betook
themselves to their homes. In another invasion they plundered Illyricum
and Thessaly and attempted to storm the wall at Thermopylae; and since
the guards on the walls defended them most valiantly, they sought out
the ways around and unexpectedly found the path which leads up the
mountain which rises there[3]. In this way they destroyed almost all the
Greeks except the Peloponnesians, and then withdrew. And the Persians
not long afterwards broke off the treaty and wrought such harm to the
Romans of the East as I shall set forth immediately.

Belisarius, after humbling Vittigis, the king of the Goths and Italians,
brought him alive to Byzantium. And I shall now proceed to tell how the
army of the Persians invaded the land of the Romans. When the Emperor
Justinian perceived that Chosroes was eager for war, he wished to offer
him some counsel and to dissuade him from the undertaking. Now it
happened that a certain man had come to Byzantium from the city of
Daras, Anastasius by name, well known for his sagacity; he it was who
had broken the tyranny which had been established recently in Daras.
Justinian therefore wrote a letter and sent it by this Anastasius to
Chosroes; and the message of the letter was as follows: "It is the part
of men of discretion and those by whom divine things are treated with
due respect, when causes of war arise, and in particular against men who
are in the truest sense friends, to exert all their power to put an end
to them; but it belongs to foolish men and those who most lightly bring
on themselves the enmity of Heaven to devise occasions for war and
insurrection which have no real existence. Now to destroy peace and
enter upon war is not a difficult matter, since the nature of things is
such as to make the basest activities easy for the most dishonourable
men. But when they have brought about war according to their intention,
to return again to peace is for men, I think, not easy. And yet thou
chargest me with writing letters which were not written with any dark
purpose, and thou hast now made haste to interpret these with arbitrary
judgment, not in the sense in whi