tage, but were satisfied to reoccupy the ground from
which they had been driven.

Scarcely was the battle re-established in this quarter when the Romans
found themselves in still greater difficulties upon their right.
Here Perozes had determined to deliver his main attack. The corps of
Immortals, which he had kept in reserve, and such troops as he could
spare from his centre, were secretly massed upon his own left, and
charged the Roman right with such fury that it was broken and began a
hasty retreat. The Persians pursued in a long column, and were carrying
all before them, when once more an impetuous flank charge of the
barbarian cavalry, which now formed an important element in the Roman
armies, changed the face of affairs, and indeed decided the fortune of
the day. The Persian column was actually cut in two by the Massagetic
horse; those who had advanced the furthest were completely separated
from their friends, and were at once surrounded and slain. Among them
was the standard-bearer of Baresmanes, who commanded the Persian left.
The fall of this man increased the general confusion. In vain did the
Persian column, checked in its advance, attempt an orderly retreat. The
Romans assaulted it in front and on both flanks, and a terrible carnage
ensued. The crowning disaster was the death of Baresmanes, who was slain
by Sunicas, the Massa-Goth; whereupon the whole Persian army broke and
fled without offering any further resistance. Here fell 5000, including
numbers of the "Immortals." The slaughter would have been still greater,
had not Belisarius and his lieutenant, Termogenes, with wise caution
restrained the Roman troops and recalled them quickly from the pursuit
of the enemy, content with the success which they had achieved. It was
so long since a Roman army had defeated a Persian one in the open field
that the victory had an extraordinary value, and it would have
been foolish to risk a reverse in the attempt to give it greater
completeness.

While these events took place in Mesopotamia, the Persian arms were also
unsuccessful in the Armenian highlands, whither Kobad had sent a second
army to act offensively against Rome, under the conduct of a certain
Mermeroes. The Roman commanders in this region were Sittas, the former
colleague of Belisarius, and Dorotheas, a general of experience. Their
troops did not amount to more than half the number of the enemy, yet
they contrived to inflict on the Persians two defeats, on