The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [730]
[Footnote 110: It is presumptuous to controvert the opinion of Ammianus, a soldier and a spectator. Yet it is difficult to understand how the mountains of Corduene could extend over the plains of Assyria, as low as the conflux of the Tigris and the great Zab; or how an army of sixty thousand men could march one hundred miles in four days.
Note: Yet this appears to be the case (in modern maps: ) the march is the difficulty. - M.]
[Footnote !!!: Sapor availed himself, a few years after, of the dissolution of the alliance between the Romans and the Armenians.
See St. M. iii. 163. - M.]
[Footnote 111: The treaty of Dura is recorded with grief or indignation by Ammianus, (xxv. 7,) Libanius, (Orat. Parent. c. 142, p. 364,) Zosimus, (l. iii. p. 190, 191,) Gregory Nazianzen, (Orat. iv. p. 117, 118, who imputes the distress to Julian, the deliverance to Jovian,) and Eutropius, (x. 17.) The last-mentioned writer, who was present in military station, styles this peace necessarium quidem sed ignoblem.]
The sophist of Antioch, who saw with indignation the sceptre of his hero in the feeble hand of a Christian successor, professes to admire the moderation of Sapor, in contenting himself with so small a portion of the Roman empire. If he had stretched as far as the Euphrates the claims of his ambition, he might have been secure, says Libanius, of not meeting with a refusal. If he had fixed, as the boundary of Persia, the Orontes, the Cydnus, the Sangarius, or even the Thracian Bosphorus, flatterers would not have been wanting in the court of Jovian to convince the timid monarch, that his remaining provinces would still afford the most ample gratifications of power and luxury. ^112 Without adopting in its full force this malicious insinuation, we must acknowledge, that the conclusion of so ignominious a treaty was facilitated by the private ambition of Jovian. The obscure domestic, exalted to the throne by fortune, rather than by merit, was impatient to escape from the hands of the Persians, that he might prevent the designs of Procopius, who commanded the army of Mesopotamia, and establish his doubtful reign over the legions and provinces which were still ignorant of the hasty and tumultuous choice of the camp beyond the Tigris. ^113 In the neighborhood of the same river, at no very considerable distance from the fatal station of Dura, ^114 the ten thousand Greeks, without generals, or guides, or provisions, were abandoned, above twelve hundred miles from their native country, to the resentment of a victorious monarch. The difference of their conduct and success depended much more on their character than on their situation. Instead of tamely resigning themselves to the secret deliberations and private views of a single person, the united councils of the Greeks were inspired by the generous enthusiasm of a popular assembly; where the mind of each citizen is filled with the love of glory, the pride of freedom, and the contempt of death. Conscious of their superiority over the Barbarians in arms and discipline, they disdained to yield, they refused to capitulate: every obstacle was surmounted by their patience, courage, and military skill; and the memorable retreat of the ten thousand exposed and insulted the weakness of the Persian monarchy. ^115
[Footnote 112: Libanius, Orat. Parent. c. 143, p. 364, 365.]
[Footnote 113: Conditionibus . . . . . dispendiosis Romanae reipublicae impositis . . . . quibus cupidior regni quam gloriae Jovianus, imperio rudis, adquievit. Sextus Rufus de Provinciis, c. 29. La Bleterie has expressed, in a long, direct oration, these specious considerations of public and private interest, (Hist. de Jovien, tom. i. p. 39, &c.)]
[Footnote 114: The generals were murdered