3. The emperor himself with a few others crossed over in the small boats, which we said were saved when the fleet was burnt, and then sent the same vessels backwards and forwards till our whole body was brought across. And at length all of us, except such as were drowned, reached the opposite bank of the river, being saved amid our difficulties by the favour of the Supreme Deity. 4. While we were still oppressed with the fear of impending disasters, we learnt from information brought in by our outposts that the Persians were throwing a bridge over the river some way off, at a point out of our sight, in order that while all ideas of war were put an end to on our side by the ratification of the treaty of peace, they might come upon our invalids as they proceeded carelessly onwards, and on the animals exhausted with fatigue. But when they found their purpose discovered, they relinquished their base design. 5. Being now relieved from this suspicion, we hastened on by rapid marches, and approached Hatra, an ancient town in the middle of a desert, which had been long since abandoned, though at different times those warlike emperors, Trajan and Severus, had attacked it with a view to its destruction, but had been almost destroyed with their armies, as we have related in our history of their exploits. 6. And as we now learnt that over the vast plain before us for seventy miles in that arid region no water could be found but such as was brackish and fetid, and no kind of food but southernwood, wormwood, dracontium, and other bitter herbs, we filled the vessels which we had with sweet water, and having slain the camels and the rest of the beasts of burden, we thus sought to insure some kind of supplies, though not very wholesome. 7. For six days the army marched, till at last even grass, the last comfort of extreme necessity, could not be found; when Cassianus, Duke of Mesopotamia, and the tribune Mauricius, who had been sent forward with this object, came to a fort called Ur, and brought some food from the supplies which the army under Procopius and Sebastian, by living sparingly, had managed to preserve. 8. From this place another person of the name of Procopius, a secretary, and Memoridus, a military tribune, was sent forward to Illyricum and Gaul to announce the death of Julian, and the subsequent promotion of Jovian to the rank of emperor. 9. And Jovian deputed them to present his father-in-law Lucillianus (who, after giving up military service, had retired to the tranquillity of private life, and who was at that time dwelling at Sirmium) with a commission as captain of the forces of cavalry and infantry, and to urge him at the same time to hasten to Milan, to support him there in any difficulties which might arise, or (what he feared most) to oppose any attempts which might be made to bring about a revolution.