Crossing the mountains, “deserted and solitary places,” Ammianus returned to his general. Ursicinus had made his headquarters in southern Armenia, at the city of Amida (modern-day Diyarbakir in Turkey), on the western bank of the Tigris, where seven legions had gathered. [Ibid., 7, 2] The count listened to Ammianus’ report, and considered the situation. Sabinianus, the official Roman commander in the East, was at Edessa in Osroene, to the west, near the Euphrates, with another large body of Roman troops.
Sabinianus, “a cultivated man” and “well to do” despite an obscure family background, was nonetheless “unfit for war” and “inefficient,” in Ammianus’ opinion. With Sabinianus showing no interest in leading his troops to intercept the Persians before they reached the Euphrates, Ursicinus sent couriers galloping across the Roman province of Mesopotamia with orders for the governor and for the province’s military commander. [Ibid., XVIII, 5, 5]
In response to the general’s orders, Roman troops were soon compelling Mesopotamian farmers and their families to move with their flocks to safer quarters to the west. At the same time, the city of Carrhae was totally evacuated, for it was only surrounded by weak fortifications and could not be successfully defended. Then, also on Ursicinus’ orders, Roman troops set fire to all the farmland of the province, to deny grain and fodder to the advancing Persians. The flames swept across the plain, and mile after mile of yellowing corn that was almost ready for harvesting was consumed, as were many wild animals including lions, as Mesopotamia was blackened from the Tigris to the Euphrates. As the plains burned, Roman troops erected fortifications at potential crossing places along the eastern bank of the Euphrates. [Ibid., 7, 3–4]
Bypassing the Roman-held city of Nineveh, the Persian army continued west toward Edessa. But then, at the village of Bebase, a scout arrived with the news that the past winter’s melting snows had flooded the Euphrates, making it impassable for the time being. On the advice of the defector Antoninus, the Persian army now turned sharply right and marched north, to attack Amida. At Amida, Ursicinus was preparing to pull out. Believing that Shapur was still pushing on toward the Euphrates, the Roman general had decided to hurry west, cross the Euphrates at Samosata in Commagene, and then move down the river and destroy the bridges at Capersana and Zeugma in Syria to deny the Persians an easy Euphrates crossing.
On the road to Amida, guided by Antoninus, an advance force of 20,000 cavalrymen under the Persian generals Tamsapor and Nohodares galloped ahead of the main Persian army. Two Roman cavalry wings recently arrived from Illyricum had been stationed on the approaches to Amida to guard against just such a surprise attack. Come nightfall, the 700 Roman troopers of the two wings withdrew from the public roads they were supposed to be watching and were soon “overcome with wine and sleep.” In the darkness, the Persian advance force slipped by. Come daylight, the Persian commanders had hidden their men and horses behind sand dunes outside Amida. [Ibid., 8, 3]
This was the summer’s day on which Ursicinus set off for Samosata, leaving his departure until late in the afternoon so that he rode through the cool of the night. As twilight was falling, the Roman general and his staff and escort of both infantry and cavalry had not gone far from Amida before, as they topped a rise, they saw the “gleam of shining arms” in the distance, as the Persian cavalry force made its appearance. “An excited cry was raised that the enemy were upon us,” said Ammianus, who was riding with his general. Ursicinus’ standard was raised, and the small Roman force concentrated in close order. [Ibid., 8, 4–5]
As Persian light cavalry came up at the gallop, “some of our men rashly ran forward, and were killed” by the arrows of the Persians. When both sides pressed forward, Ursicinus recognized Antoninus leading the enemy force, and yelled that he was a traitor and a criminal. Antoninus, removing the turban that the Persian king had presented him, sprang from his horse.
Antoninus, bowing before Ursicinus, called to him, “Pardon me, most illustrious Count. It is through necessity and not voluntarily that I have had to descend to this conduct, which I know is iniquitous. As you know, it was the unjust demands of scoundrels that drove me to it. Not even you, with your high position, could protect me from their avarice.” With that, Antoninus withdrew, respectfully walking backward, until he had disappeared into the descending night. [Ibid., 8, 6]
From the rear of the Roman column, which was on higher ground, came another warning cry. A mass of Persian cataphracts, heavy cavalry, was galloping up to join the fight. Without waiting for orders, men of the general’s party scattered in all directions, hoping to escape into the darkness. Ammianus saw his chief surrounded by Persian horsemen, “but he was saved by the speed of his horse and got away, in company with the tribune Aiadalthes and a single groom.” With just these two companions, Ursicinus was able to make good his escape to the west. [Ibid., 8, 10]
In the darkness, Ammianus, on horseback, found himself in a throng of Romans who were driven, fighting all the way, to the high, steep bank of the Tigris. Some Roman soldiers jumped from the bank, only to be weighed down by their equipment and stuck fast in the mud at the river’s edge. Others, caught by the swirling water, were drawn out into the swift-flowing stream and drowned. Some men stood their ground on the bank and tried to fight off the Persians, with varying degrees of success. Some tried to break through the ranks of enemy horsemen.
Ammianus became separated from the others. “[I] was looking around to see what to do when Verennianus of the Household Protectors came up with an arrow in his thigh.” Ammianus tried to remove the arrow. But suddenly finding himself surrounded by “the foremost Persians,” Ammianus kicked his horse into motion and galloped away “at breathless speed, and aimed for the city” of Amida. [Ibid., 8, 11]
Amida was situated on a rocky plateau beside the River Tigris. From the direction that Ammianus approached it, there was a single narrow ascent up the cliffs. When Ammianus arrived, he found that thousands of Persians were attempting to assault the city using that same precarious route. It was clear that they had been met on the slope by Roman infantry from Amida who had inflicted heavy casualties on them before withdrawing inside the city walls. In the darkness, after discarding his horse, and, with a companion—probably the wounded Household Protector Verennianus—the young officer began to climb the rise, picking his way past Persians living and dead, the living being too focused on their attack to notice the two Romans in their midst.
Unable to proceed any further, the pair lay down among the dead to await sunrise, using night and the mounds of corpses to cover their presence. So crowded together were the Persian bodies, said Ammianus, that many dead men stood upright among the throng, prevented by the crush from falling. “In front of me,” said Ammianus, there was “a soldier with his head cut in two and split into equal halves by a powerful sword stroke.” The dead Persian “was so pressed in on all sides that he stood erect like a stump.” [Ibid., 8, 12]
With the dawn, “showers of missiles from all kinds of artillery flew from the battlements” of Amida, aimed at the Persian attackers on the slope below. But Ammianus and his companion had pushed up so close to the wall in the night that these missiles passed harmlessly over their heads. The two Romans rose up, and dashed for the wall, making for the rear gate. Recognized by those inside, Ammianus and his colleague were admitted to the city by the rear gate which was opened for just enough time for them to dash inside.
Amida had once been a small frontier town until Constantius, in the reign of his father Constantine, had expanded it, building extensive defensive walls and towers around it and permanently equipping those walls with a range of artillery. The Tigris wound past its eastern wall, with a defensive tower on the southeast of the city rising up directly beside the meandering waterway. To the north, the peaks of the Taurus Mountains were visible, while the barren plains of Mesopotamia extended to the southern horizon and the distant Persian heartland. Inside the city walls, Ammianus could hardly move for the crush of people. All around him, wounded la
y dying and distraught civilians wailed the names of loved ones they had lost. Others called out the names of missing relatives, hoping to find them in the unhappy throng.
There were 120,000 people crowded into Amida. Ammianus’ original Latin text read 20,000, but later scholars increased this to 120,000, considering the original figure a transcription error. In the eighteenth century, Gibbon took the figure at face value, accordingly putting 1,000–1,500 men in each of the seven legions present; but the true figure was likely to have been double that. [Gibb., XVII, n. 133]
A fair had been taking place in the city at the time the Persian advance guard had flooded to its doorstep, so that the metropolis was crammed with its own residents, visiting farmers, foreign merchants and Roman soldiers. Ammianus reported to the most senior officer in Amida, a count by the name of Aelianus. The young officer also acquainted himself with the identity of the units in Amida. He wanted to assure himself that the city could withstand a siege from an army of the magnitude of the one he had witnessed just days before from his hilltop observation post.
As Ammianus knew, the city’s garrison was normally provided by a single legion, the 5th Parthica, a unit originally raised some 130 years before. To it had been added six other legions. Several of these had supported the German-born usurper Flavius Magnentius when he had risen against Constantius at Cologne in AD 350. One of these legions was the 30th Ulpia, which dated back to Trajan and which had been based at Vetera on the Lower Rhine at the time of the Magnentius rebellion.
Two of the other legions had been raised by Magnentius and his brother Decentius in Gaul in AD 350 to support the bid for the throne. Constantius rated their legionaries “untrustworthy and turbulent,” but Ammianus considered these Gallic soldiers “brave, energetic men.” Constantius had sent all these disgraced units east to face foreign foes after first defeating Magnentius at Mursa in Dalmatia in AD 351 and then his brother Decentius in the Cottian Alps two years later. [Ibid, 9, 3; XIX, 5, 2]
Of the other legions at Amida there was the 10th Fortenses, which had been formed from a vexillation from one of the two existing 10th legions. There were also the Superventores and Praeventores, legions raised in AD 348 by Constantius for service in the East. These latter three legions had been stationed at Singara in AD 348, and with their commander Aelianus these “raw recruits” had broken out of that doomed city at night, killing “great numbers of Persians while they were buried in sleep.” [Ibid., XVIII, 9, 3] But, at the same time, those Roman legions had suffered heavy casualties at Singara.
Among the auxiliary units also stationed in the besieged city was a squadron of horse archers whose members were freeborn foreigners. The Roman force holding Amida and several smaller fortresses nearby numbered fewer than 30,000 men. Soon, they would face assault from 100,000 determined Persians. [Ibid., 9, 9]
While Antoninus and the Persian advance guard had pushed on to Amida to seal off the city, King Shapur and the Persian army’s vanguard had paused to assault two smaller Mesopotamian fortresses, at Reman and Busa. The Roman garrisons at both had swiftly surrendered. The men of these Roman garrisons were made prisoners; the women, including a company of young Christian nuns, were set free.
On the third day of the Persian siege of Amida, a hot July day, Shapur arrived with the main Persian army. Behind the army came a massive baggage train, carrying everything from captured Roman artillery to tents and couches for the officers and materials for conducting sieges. Said Vegetius, writing thirty years later, “The Persians, following the example of the Romans of old, surround their camps with ditches and, as the ground in their country is generally sandy, they always carry with them empty bags to fill with the sand taken out of the trenches, and raise a parapet by piling them one atop the other.” Shapur’s baggage train also carried a number of wives; at least those of the senior Persian officers and their allies. [Vege., III]
Ammianus was one of the Roman soldiers crowding the walls of the city that day to watch the vast enemy column arrive. “When the first gleam of dawn appeared, everything as far as the eye could see shone with glittering arms, and mail-clad cavalry filled hill and hollow.” King Shapur, mounted on a massive charger, accompanied by the riders of his bodyguard and followed by kings, princes and satraps from many eastern nations, boldly rode up to the main gate of the city, his royal crown replaced with a golden helmet in the shape of a bejeweled ram’s head set with jewels, complete with projecting horns. [Amm., XIX, 1, 2–3]
Roman defector Antoninus had advised Shapur that it would be a mistake to become bogged down here in a lengthy siege, for that would give the Romans time to prepare for them west of the Euphrates. The Persian king had therefore decided to awe the occupants of Amida into submission. He came so near the front gate in his bid to call for a parley that Ammianus could clearly make out his features—his large nose, close-shaved beard and mustache, and long, dark, curly hair that fell to his shoulders. But the over-confident Shapur was in for a rude surprise. The garrisons at Reman and Busa may have been overawed by the sight of him, but the Romans at Amida were not that easily dazzled by his presence. With a thwack of ropes and a clang of iron firing arms against restraining bars, ballistas on the front wall let fly with their deadly cargoes.
Lethal iron-tipped darts and slender lances went scything by the king on the still morning air. The king and his escort quickly turned about, raising a cloud of dust which helped to cover their retreat, as more missiles were launched from the city walls. Had Shapur been killed that day, the history of the region may have been very different, but he survived the episode unscathed but for a torn robe caused by a Roman lance. But the king’s pride was hurt, and he raged against the occupants of Amida and ordered a full-scale assault to begin. Only once he had calmed down were his generals able to talk him into giving the city one more chance to surrender before he invested too much time and effort besieging it.
At dawn the following day, King Grumbates of the Chionitae rode up to the city’s eastern wall accompanied by a mass of followers including his teenage son. Grumbates had volunteered to call the occupants of Amida to sit down with the Persians at a peace conference. But before the king could utter a word he was spotted by the crew of a Roman ballista on the wall, and they let fly. The steel-headed bolt flew by Grumbates and struck his son. That son, a tall, handsome young man who, having just turned 16, had come of age, took the bolt in the chest; it passed right through his expensive armor and penetrated his breast. To the horror of his father and comrades, the prince toppled from his horse, dead. As more missiles flew their way, Grumbates and the others quickly galloped out of range, leaving the prince’s body lying in the dust.
The affronted Chionitae roused other tribes to action, and thousands of men came charging up the slope to help recover the body of the fallen prince, as the Romans on the walls rained down missiles on them. Slingers and archers from the ranks of the Persians and their allies answered their fire with volleys of slingshot and thousands of arrows. These exchanges went on all day, as many men sacrificed their lives trying to retrieve the body of Grumbates’ son. By day’s end, the bodies of dead and dying were piled all around the dead prince, their blood running like rivers across the dry earth. After dark, the young man’s body was successfully dragged back to the Persian lines.
For seven days the Persians suspended operations to mourn the death of the much-loved prince. His body was placed on a high platform, along with the bodies of ten others who had also perished, all laid out on couches. Throughout the week, the tribes all conducted mourning feasts by community and by military company, with funeral dances and songs of lamentation. The women, meanwhile, in customary fashion beat their breasts and wept loudly for the prince.
At the end of the week the funeral platform was burned, and the prince’s ashes placed in a silver urn. As the ashes were carried away to be buried in the earth of his homeland, a meeting of Shapur and his war council decided that the young man’s spirit would be best propitiated by destroying the ci
ty that had been the cause of his death. Antoninus’ plan to cross the Euphrates was put in abeyance; Shapur and his army would not now leave this place until Amida had been razed, no matter how long it took.
Over the next two days, Persian light cavalry ranged the countryside destroying the crops of the region. Then Shapur raised his flame red banner, signaling to his troops that battle was to begin. Amida was encircled by a line of shields five men deep. It had been decided by the Persian council of war that the assault on Amida would be launched from all sides at once. Lots were drawn by the principal nations, and three days after the prince’s funeral pyre had been consumed by fire, the Persians and their allies left their camp at dawn and silently moved into position for the assault on the city. [Ibid., XX, 6, 3]
Grumbates and his Chionatae had drawn the eastern sector, where the king’s son had perished. The Gelani lined up to attack the southern gate, the Albani the northern gate, the Segestani the western gate. Beyond the battle lines, captured Roman catapults, their Persian crews trained by legionary prisoners, were set up, trained on the city, and loaded. From a city tower, Ammianus watched the enemy take up their positions, and, with them, lines of war elephants “with their wrinkled bodies and loaded with armed men.” It was, he said, “a hideous spectacle, dreadful beyond every form of horror.” Ammianus and those around him could not hope to survive against such a massive and determined force, and they vowed “to end our lives gloriously.” They would, they agreed, die fighting. [Ibid., XIX, 2, 3–4]
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