essing upon his rear, retarded his
march, and caused him from time to time no inconsiderable losses. The
retreat under these circumstances was slow; the army had to be rested
and recruited when it fell in with any accumulation of provisions; and
the average progress made seems to have been not much more than ten
miles a day. This tardy advance allowed the more slow-moving portion of
the Persian army to close in upon the retiring Romans; and Julian soon
found himself closely followed by dense masses of the enemy's troops, by
the heavy cavalry clad in steel panoplies, and armed with long spears,
by large bodies of archers, and even by a powerful corps of elephants.
This grand army was under the command of a general whom the Roman
writers call Meranes, and of two sons of Sapor. It pressed heavily
upon the Roman rearguard; and Julian, after a little while, found it
necessary to stop his march, confront his pursuers, and offer them
battle. The offer was accepted, and an engagement took place in a tract
called Maranga. The enemy advanced in two lines--the first composed
of the mailed horsemen and the archers intermixed, the second of the
elephants. Julian prepared his army to receive the attack by disposing
it in the form of a crescent, with the centre drawn back considerably;
but as the Persians advanced into the hollow space, he suddenly led his
troops forward at speed, allowing the archers scarcely time to discharge
their arrows before he engaged them and the horse in close combat. A
long and bloody struggle followed; but the Persians were unaccustomed to
hand-to-hand fighting and disliked it; they gradually gave ground, and
at last broke up and fled, covering their retreat, however, with the
clouds of arrows which they knew well how to discharge as they retired.
The weight of their arms, and the fiery heat of the summer sun,
prevented the Romans from carrying the pursuit very far. Julian recalled
them quickly to the protection of the camp, and suspended his march for
some days while the wounded had their hurts attended to.

The Persian troops, having suffered heavily in the battle, made no
attempt to storm the Roman camp. They were content to spread themselves
on all sides, to destroy or carry off all the forage and provisions, and
to make the country, through which the Roman army must retire, a desert.
Julian's forces were already suffering severely from scarcity of food,
and the general want was but very slightly relieve