The chiefs rejoiced in secret; the Tuscan augurs openly triumphed. After the burning of the ships there had been a general insurrection. And now not only the Galileans but the Olympians and Hellenists were persuaded that a curse was on the Emperor's head, and that the Furies were pursuing him. When he walked through the camp talk would cease and people edge away from him in fear. Sibylline books and the Book of Revelation, Tuscan wizards, Christian prophecies, gods, and angels, joined forces to crush the common foe. The Emperor then announced that he would lead his men homewards northward through the fertile provinces of Apolloniatis and Adiabene. According to this plan of retreat, while retaining a hope of forming a junction with the troops of Procopius and Sebastian, Julian consoled himself with the thought that he was keeping within the borders of Persia, and that he might still encounter Sapor's army, deliver battle, and win a decisive victory. The Persians were no longer visible. Desiring to weaken the Romans before a crushing attack, they set on fire their own rich champaigns of barley and wheat, and destroyed every store and granary in the country. Julian's soldiers marched through a black desert, still smoking with traces of fire. Famine soon set in. In order to augment the invaders' distress the Persians had broken the canal-dykes and flooded the fields, being aided in this endeavour by brooks and torrents which had overflowed their courses owing to the melting of the snow on the Armenian mountains. The flood dried up quickly under the burning rays of the June sun, but left the warm soil coated with slimy mud. Asphyxiating vapours and the bitter odour of ashes and of rotting vegetation loaded the air every night, and befouled the drinking water, the food, and even the rags of the soldiers. Myriads of insects rose from corrupted marshes. Mosquitoes, venomous horse-flies, rose in clouds round the beasts of burden and fastened themselves on the men. Their subtle hum went on night and day. Maddened by stings, the horses died or stampeded, the oxen broke their traces and overturned the wagons. After exhausting marches through defiles and fords the soldiers obtained no rest; tents were no refuge against the insects, and to get any sleep the men had to wrap their heads in stifling cloaks, while the bites of a certain small transparent dung-coloured fly produced swellings and boils which gradually became a horrible purulent plague. During the last days of the march the sun was invisible. The low, dense, stifling sky was a white cloth of cloud; and its motionless glare still more painful to the eyes than the naked sun. And so they kept marching, wasted, weak, with hung head and feeble step, day after day, between the implacable sky and the black, burnt earth.