On these very same days Prosper, Spectatus, and Eustathius, who had been sent as envoys to the Persians (as we have shown above),xvii. 5, 15. approached the king on his return to Ctesiphon,A city of Assyria, on the Tigris, the capital of the Parthian (Persian) king. bearing letters and gifts from the emperor, and demanded peace with no change in the present status. Mindful of the emperor’s instructions, they sacrificed no whit of the advantage and majesty of Rome, insisting that a treaty of friendship ought to be established with the condition that no move should be made to disturb the position of Armenia or Mesopotamia.

Having therefore tarried there for a long time, since they saw that the king was most obstinately hardened against accepting peace, unless the dominion over those regions should be made over to him, they returned without fulfilling their mission.

Afterwards Count Lucillianus was despatched, together with Procopius, at that time state secretary, to accomplish the self-same thing with like insistence on the conditions; the latter afterwards, bound as it were by a knot of stern necessity, rose in revolution.See xxvi. 5 and 6.