Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

l66 HISTORY OF PERSIA.
rulers of the East and the West, were, as it happened,
at almost the same time, though at a distance of
more than two thousand miles, engaged in repelling,
as best they could, the impetuous onslaught of the bar-
barians of the North. If Shahpur had his Massagetae
to deal with, Constantius found an equal foe in the
Sarmatians.
At the conclusion of these two wars, an attempt
to establish a treaty between the rival emperors, which
Constantius seems to have been really anxious to effect,
was frustrated by an adventurer named Antoninus, and
Shahpur, unfolding his standards, crossed the head
waters of the Euphrates in another invasion of Asia
Minor. Finding most of the fortified towns well prepared
to resist him, he wisely, for a time, kept aloof from need-
less sieges, yet was he tempted, in a moment of rashness,
to attempt that of Amida, and, though successful, lost
the flower of his army, indeed, if the historians of the
time can be credited, so large a number as 30,000 men.
In fact, the actual result of a campaign, which was to
have suppressed the Roman power in the East, was
limited to the reduction of the two fortified towns
of Singara and Bezabde. Nor ''ndeed did the late
return of Constantius himself to the scene do any
thing towards redeeming the waning reputation of
Rome ; especially as he failed with disgrace to recover
the captured Bezabde, though its walls were repeatedly
shaken by the most powerful battering rams then
available. But Shahpur was now too opposed by a
new emperor ; who, had he had knowledge comparable
with his energy, might have won back for Rome nearly
all she had lost. In Julian, many hoped, perhaps some