siege from the rapacious Arabs.[1] Kobad himself, at the head of a powerful army of Persians and Huns, quickly followed the Arabian chief, and laid siege to the city of Amida, now Dyar-bekr. In his besieging camp he was visited by the ambassador of Anastasius, who had stooped to solicit the departure of his enemy from the Roman territory by the offer of a large sum of money. The ambassador was retained by Kobad, the siege of Amida pursued with vigour, and the Arabs sent to invade and lay waste the districts of Haran, where they carried their incursions to the walls of Constantina, or Tela. They were then at first successfully opposed by the united exertions of Olympius and Eugenius, the governors of Tela and Melitena, but in a second engagement the few troops these officers had collected to defend the Syrian frontier were unequal to the united strength of Arabian, Persian, and Hun, and their defeat laid open to the fury of the enemy the whole country up to the walls of Edessa.[2]
During a short and precarious peace, or rather cessation of arms, which appears to have been pur-
- ↑ S. Isaac Magnus, who was contemporary with the fall of Beth-Hur, represents the destruction of its inhabitants as the punishment which they had drawn down on themselves by their idolatry, worshipping Venus, the common deity of the Arabian tribes, and equalling in wickedness the people of Nisibis and Haran, who had fallen off to the Persian superstitions. Ap. Assemann. tom. i. p. 225.
- ↑ Jo. Stylites, ap. Assemann. tom. i. p. 273-4.
