had not as yet, by any overt act, justified these suspicions,
and Julian seems to have regarded him as an assured friend and ally.
Early in A.D. 363 he addressed a letter to the Armenian monarch,
requiring him to levy a considerable force, and hold himself in
readiness to execute such orders as he would receive within a short
time. The style, address, and purport of this letter were equally
distasteful to Arsaces, whose pride was outraged, and whose indolence
was disturbed, by the call thus suddenly made upon him. His own desire
was probably to remain neutral; he felt no interest in the standing
quarrel between his two powerful neighbors; he was under obligations
to both of them; and it was for his advantage that they should remain
evenly balanced. We cannot ascribe to him any earnest religious feeling;
but, as one who kept up the profession of Christianity, he could not but
regard with aversion the Apostate, who had given no obscure intimation
of his intention to use his power to the utmost in order to sweep the
Christian religion from the face of the earth. The disinclination of
their monarch to observe the designs of Julian was shared, or rather
surpassed, by his people, the more educated portion of whom were
strongly attached to the new faith and worship. If the great historian
of Armenia is right in stating that Julian at this time offered an
open insult to the Armenian religion, we must pronounce him strangely
imprudent. The alliance of Armenia was always of the utmost importance
to Rome in any attack upon the East. Julian seems to have gone out of
his way to create offence in this quarter, where his interests required
that he should exercise all his powers of conciliation.

The forces which the emperor regarded as at his disposal, and with
which he expected to take the field, were the following. His own troops
amounted to 83,000 or (according to another account) to 95,000 men. They
consisted chiefly of Roman legionaries, horse and foot, but included
a strong body of Gothic auxiliaries. Armenia was expected to furnish
a considerable force, probably not less than 20,000 men; and the light
horse of the Saracens would, it was thought, be tolerably numerous.
Altogether, an army of above a hundred thousand men was about to be
launched on the devoted Persia, which was believed unlikely to offer any
effectual, if even any serious, resistance.

The impatience of Julian scarcely allowed him to await the conclusion of
the