Book 18
6.17
Then with our anxious cares increasing we went from there as quickly as circumstances allowed to Amida,Modern Diarbekir, see Gibbon, ii. p. 269, Bury. a city afterwards notorious for the calamities which it suffered.Ch. ix. below, and xix, 1–8. And when our scouts had returned there, we found in the scabbard of a sword a parchment written in cipher, which had been brought to us by order of Procopius, who, as I said before, had previously been sent as an envoy to the Persians with Count Lucillianus. In this, with intentional obscurity, for fear that, if the bearers were taken and the meaning of the message known, most disastrous consequences would follow, he gave the following message:—
6.18
Now that the envoys of the Greeks have been sent far away and perhaps are to be killed, that aged king, not content with Hellespontus, will bridge the Granicus and the RhyndacusTwo rivers of Mysia, in north-western Asia Minor, the former celebrated for the victory of Alexander the Great over the Persians, the latter for the defeat of Mithradates by Lucullus. and come to invade Asia with many nations. He is naturally passionate and very cruel, and he has as an instigator and abetter the successor of the former Roman emperor Hadrian;Referring of course to the deserter Antoninus. unless Greece takes heed, it is all over with her and her dirge chanted.
