Before the Italian war, the Empire of the Goths extended from the territory of the Gauls to the boundaries of Dacia, and the city of Sirmium; but, when the Roman army arrived in Italy, the greater part of Cisalpine Gaul and of the territory of the Venetians was in the occupation of the Germans. Sirmium and the adjacent country was in the hands of the Gepidae. The entire tract of country, however, was utterly depopulated; war and its attendant evils, disease and famine, had exterminated the inhabitants. Illyria and the whole of Thrace, that is to say, the countries between the Ionian Gulf and the suburbs of Byzantium, including Hellas and the Chersonese, were overrun nearly every year after the accession of Justinian by the Huns, Slavs and Antes, who inflicted intolerable sufferings upon the inhabitants. I believe that, on the occasion of each of these inroads, more than two hundred thousand Romans were either slain or carried away into slavery, so that the solitude of Scythia overspread these provinces. Such were the results of the wars in Libya and Europe. During all this time, the Saracens also made perpetual inroads upon the Eastern Romans, from Egypt to the Persian frontiers, and harassed them so persistently, that those districts gradually became depopulated. I believe it would be impossible for anyone to estimate correctly the number of men who perished there. The Persians under Chosroes thrice invaded the rest of the Roman territory, destroyed the cities, slew or carried off those whom they found in the captured towns in each district, and depopulated the country wherever they attacked it. From the time they entered Colchis, the losses were divided between themselves, the Lazes, and the Romans, as up to the present day.