passage of the bridge of Thapsacus. Their skilful guide, changing his
plan of operations, then conducted the army by a longer circuit, but
through a fertile territory, towards the head of the Euphrates, where
the infant river is reduced to a shallow and accessible stream. Sapor
overlooked, with prudent disdain, the strength of Nisibis; but as he
passed under the walls of Amida, he resolved to try whether the majesty
of his presence would not awe the garrison into immediate submission.
The sacrilegious insult of a random dart, which glanced against the
royal tiara, convinced him of his error; and the indignant monarch
listened with impatience to the advice of his ministers, who conjured
him not to sacrifice the success of his ambition to the gratification of
his resentment. The following day Grumbates advanced towards the gates
with a select body of troops, and required the instant surrender of the
city, as the only atonement which could be accepted for such an act
of rashness and insolence. His proposals were answered by a general
discharge, and his only son, a beautiful and valiant youth, was pierced
through the heart by a javelin, shot from one of the balistae. The
funeral of the prince of the Chionites was celebrated according to the
rites of the country; and the grief of his aged father was alleviated by
the solemn promise of Sapor, that the guilty city of Amida should serve
as a funeral pile to expiate the death, and to perpetuate the memory, of
his son.

[Footnote 54: Ammian. lxviii. 6, 7, 8, 10.]

[Footnote 54a: These perhaps were the barbarous tribes who inhabit the
northern part of the present Schirwan, the Albania of the ancients. This
country, now inhabited by the Lezghis, the terror of the neighboring
districts, was then occupied by the same people, called by the ancients
Legae, by the Armenians Gheg, or Leg. The latter represent them as
constant allies of the Persians in their wars against Armenia and the
Empire. A little after this period, a certain Schergir was their king,
and it is of him doubtless Ammianus Marcellinus speaks. St. Martin, ii.
285.--M.]

The ancient city of Amid or Amida, [55] which sometimes assumes the
provincial appellation of Diarbekir, [56] is advantageously situate in
a fertile plain, watered by the natural and artificial channels of the
Tigris, of which the least inconsiderable stream bends in a semicircular
form round the eastern part of the city. The emperor Constantius
had re