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Often appears with: siege and fortification · conquest, plunder, and captives · treaties, truces, and peacemaking · strategy and the aims of war · battle and tactics · sapor’s reflections · sapor’s invasion route · sapor of persia · roman deserter guide · roman casualties · persian withdrawal · persian sallies
Usually: narrative (6) · detachment (3) · the test or trial (2) · censure (2) · lament (2) · argument (1) · commentary or gloss (1) · betrayal (1) · captivity (1) · confronting death (1)
“for the biting jest which flavours too much of truth, leaves always behind it a rankling memory.” Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius · observation
“In the seventy-three days during which he had been blockading Amida, he had lost thirty thousand soldiers” Ammianus Marcellinus, The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus · observation
King Sapor marches toward Amida with a large army and glittering armor, hoping to frighten the garrison into surrender, but his conspicuous appearance draws arrows and javelins.
ARGUMENT. I. Sapor, while exhorting the citizens of Amida to surrender, is assailed with arrows and javelins by the garrison--And when king Grumbates makes a similar attempt, his son is slain.--II. Amida is blockaded, and within two days is twice assaulted by the Persians.--III. Ursicinus makes a vain proposal to sally out by night, and surprise the besiegers, being resisted by Sabinianus, …
After the Persian siege and fall of Amida, Shapur and the Persians consider withdrawing; Ælian of Amida and other defenders are crucified, prisoners are killed, and Craugasius’s wife secretly sends a messenger to restore her husband.
IX. § 1. In the mean time Sapor and the Persians began to think of returning home, because they feared to penetrate more inland with their prisoners and booty, now that the autumn was nearly over, and the unhealthy star of the Kids had arisen. 2. But amid the massacres and plunder of the destroyed city, Ælian the count, and the tribunes by whose vigour the walls of Amida had been defended, and the losses of the Per…
Ammianus contrasts Antoninus and Craugasius and shifts to Sapor’s private dread after the fall of Amida, including figures for Persian and Roman losses over a 73-day siege.
"Longo proximus intervallo."[107] 8. For Antoninus was eminent both for genius and experience in affairs, and had useful counsels for every enterprise that could be proposed, while Craugasius was of a less subtle nature, though also very celebrated. And all these events took place within a short time after the fall of Amida. 9. But the king, though showing no marks of anxiety on his countenance, and though he appea…
During the siege of a city (at Amida), Romans and Persians fight through assaults, rams, penthouses, and counter-sallies, until heavy engines, mounds, and missiles turn the contest.
audacity; and making an unexpected sally from the gates, they attacked our front rank, and with all their might hurled firebrands and iron braziers loaded with fire against the rams. 17. But after a fierce but undecided conflict, the bulk of them were driven within the walls, without having succeeded in their attempt; and presently the battlements were attacked from the mounds which the Romans had raised, with arrow…
Persian forces under Sapor advance toward Syria using a longer route; they besiege and assault Amida (Diarbekir), suffer setbacks from Roman defense, and escalate from assaults and treachery to siege works.
to intemperance, and the wines of Shiraz have triumphed over the law of Mahomet. Brisson de Regno Pers. l. ii. p. 462-472, and Voyages en Perse, tom, iii. p. 90.] The military historian, 54 who was himself despatched to observe the army of the Persians, as they were preparing to construct a bridge of boats over the Tigris, beheld from an eminence the plain of Assyria, as far as the edge of the hori…
Gibbon describes the storming and ruin of Amida, where soldiers and civilians trapped by the failed escape route are killed in a single indiscriminate massacre.
the assault. The soldiers, the citizens, their wives, their children, all who had not time to escape through the opposite gate, were involved by the conquerors in a promiscuous massacre. 55 (return) [ For the description of Amida, see D’Herbelot, Bebliotheque Orientale, p. Bibliothèque Orientale, p. 108. Histoire de Timur Bec, par Cherefeddin Ali, l. iii. c. 41. Ahmed Arabsiades, tom. i. p. 331, c.…
Machiavelli says captains should avoid taunts and threats because insults inflame hatred without weakening the enemy, illustrating with Gabade at Amida and the Veientines, and adding Roman punishments for insulting mutineers and soldiers’ origins.
To abstain from threats and injurious language, is, methinks, one of the wisest precautions a man can use. For abuse and menace take nothing from the strength of an adversary; the latter only making him more cautious, while the former inflames his hatred against you, and leads him to consider more diligently how he may cause you hurt. This is seen from the example of the Veientines, of whom I spoke in the last Chapt…
Cabades seeks a Roman loan from Anastasius but the Romans refuse, so Cabades attacks the Romans by invading Armenia and besieging Amida in winter.
they punished her, I am unable to speak with accuracy. For the Persian accounts do not agree with each other, and for this reason I omit the narration of them. Cabades, in company with Seoses, completely escaped detection, and reached the Ephthalitae Huns; there the king gave him his daughter in marriage, and then, since Cabades was now his son-in-law, he put under his command a very formidable army for a campaign a…