war in the East when facing his enemies in the West and in the North. The Persian empire still continued to be made up of vassal kingdoms, and therefore it would certainly have been possible to dismember it. But he ought, after all, to have contented himself with the peace which was within his reach, and thus in all likelihood he might have obtained the cession of Aderbijan,—perhaps even more than that, everything indeed but Babylon; but he was dreaming of a success, with regard to which the scales fell from his eyes eight days after the last ambassadors had left him. While Sapor was arming with great energy, Julian was unable to do anything against Ctesiphon, and the army of Procopius did not come up: he now found himself obliged to retreat. As it was impossible to drag the fleet up the river, he resolved upon destroying it and leading the army back again across the hills of Assyria. This retreat in the hot, burning plains, surrounded by the Persian cavalry, in the dogdays, under the sky of Babylon, was an almost hopeless undertaking: harassed by continual skirmishes he was obliged to leave behind every one of the killed and wounded; all the stragglers died, the Persians spoiling the water for them. Nevertheless the army might have held out for five days longer, when it would have reached the high ground where it would have been safe; but on the 26th of July, Julian was mortally wounded: his death caused the deepest dejection. Whether he was killed by a traitor, or by one of the enemy, is a question which it is quite useless to enter into: the joy of his domestic enemies was at least greater than that of his foreign ones. As it was found necessary to proceed to an election at once, the _præfectus prætorio_, Sallustius, unfortunately for the empire, declared that he was too old to take upon himself the imperial dignity; and thus the choice fell upon Jovian. The new emperor concluded a peace, giving up Nisibis and the five provinces beyond the Tigris; and at this price, Sapor granted him a free retreat and the needful supplies for his army. Jovian seems to have been a very commonplace kind of man, of whom, however, on the other hand, not much ill can be said: great merit is due to him for his edict for absolute freedom of belief, as he himself was a Christian. At the end of a year and a half, while following the army into the West, he died suddenly at Ancyra. The reports of a violent death are not to be trusted, any more than that of his having died from having used a pan of burning charcoal.