ty of their fortified camp, where a strong body of horse and the
flower of the Persian archers were posted. The horse charged, but the
legionaries easily defeated them, and elated with their success burst
into the camp, despite the warnings of their leader, who strove vainly
to check their ardor and to induce them to put off the completion of
their victory till the next day. A small detachment found within the
ramparts was put to the sword; and the soldiers scattered themselves
among the tents, some in quest of booty, others only anxious for some
means of quenching their raging thirst. Meantime the sun had gone down,
and the shades of night fell rapidly. Regarding the battle as over,
and the victory as assured, the Romans gave themselves up to sleep or
feasting. But now Sapor saw his opportunity--the opportunity for which
he had perhaps planned and waited. His light troops on the adjacent
hills commanded the camp, and, advancing on every side, surrounded it.
They were fresh and eager for the fray; they fought in the security
afforded by the darkness; while the fires of the camp showed them their
enemies, worn out with fatigue, sleepy, or drunken. The result, as might
have been expected, was a terrible carnage. The Persians overwhelmed
the legionaries with showers of darts and arrows; flight, under the
circumstances, was impossible; and the Roman soldiers mostly perished
where they stood. They took, however, ere they died, an atrocious
revenge. Sapor's son had been made prisoner in the course of the day;
in their desperation the legionaries turned their fury against this
innocent youth; they beat him with whips, wounded him with the points of
their weapons, and finally rushed upon him and killed him with a hundred
blows.

The battle of Singara, though thus disastrous to the Romans, had not any
great effect in determining the course or issue of the war. Sapor did
not take advantage of his victory to attack the rest of the Roman forces
in Mesopotamia, or even to attempt the siege of any large town. Perhaps
he had really suffered large losses in the earlier part of the day;
perhaps he was too much affected by the miserable death of his son to
care, till time had dulled the edge of his grief, for military glory.
At any rate, we hear of his undertaking no further enterprise till the
second year after the battle, A.D. 350, when he made his third and most
desperate attempt to capture Nisibis.

The rise of a civil war in the We