st, and the departure of Constantius
for Europe with the flower of his troops early in the year no doubt
encouraged the Persian monarch to make one more effort against the place
which had twice repulsed him with ignominy. He collected a numerous
native army, and strengthened it by the addition of a body of Indian
allies, who brought a large troop of elephants into the field. With
this force he crossed the Tigris in the early summer, and, after taking
several fortified posts, march northwards and invested Nisibis. The
Roman commander in the place was the Count Lucilianus, afterwards the
father-in-law of Jovian, a man of resource and determination. He is said
to have taken the best advantage of every favorable turn of fortune in
the course of the siege, and to have prolonged the resistance by various
subtle stratagems. But the real animating spirit of the defence was once
more the bishop, St. James, who raised the enthusiasm of the inhabitants
to the highest pitch by his exhortations, guided them by his counsels,
and was thought to work miracles for them by his prayers. Sapor tried
at first the ordinary methods of attack; he battered the walls with his
rams, and sapped them with mines. But finding that by these means he
made no satisfactory progress, he had recourse shortly to wholly novel
proceedings. The river Mygdonius (now the Jerujer), swollen by the
melting of the snows in the Mons Masius, had overflowed its banks and
covered with an inundation the plain in which Nisibis stands. Sapor saw
that the forces of nature might be employed to advance his ends, and so
embanked the lower part of the plain that the water could not run off,
but formed a deep lake round the town, gradually creeping up the walls
till it had almost reached the battlements. Having thus created an
artificial sea, the energetic monarch rapidly collected, or constructed,
a fleet of vessels, and, placing his military engines on board, launched
the ships upon the waters, and so attacked the walls of the city at
great advantage. But the defenders resisted stoutly, setting the engines
on fire with torches, and either lifting the ships from the water by
means of cranes, or else shattering them with the huge stones which they
could discharge from their balistics. Still, therefore, no impression was
made; but at last an unforeseen circumstance brought the besieged into
the greatest peril, and almost gave Nisibis into the enemy's hands. The
inundation, confined