[Sidenote:—­25—­] Nevertheless many even of these were saved, as was natural in such overwhelming numbers of people.  And those outside did not all get off safe and sound.  Numbers lost their legs or their shoulders and some [Lacuna] their [Lacuna] heads.  Others vomited blood.  One of these was Pedo the consul, and he died at once.  In brief, there was no form of violent experience that those people did not undergo at that time.  And as Heaven continued the earthquake for several days and nights, the people were dismayed and helpless, some crushed and perishing under the weight of the buildings pressing upon them, and others dying of hunger in case it chanced that by the inclination of the timbers they were left alive in a clear space, it might be in a kind of arch-shaped colonnade.  When at last the trouble had subsided, some one who ventured to mount the ruins caught sight of a live woman.  She was not alone but had also an infant, and had endured by feeding both herself and her child with her milk.  They dug her out and resuscitated her together with her offspring, and after that they searched the other heaps but were no longer able to find in them any living creature save a child sucking at the breasts of its mother, who was dead.  As they drew out the corpses they no longer felt any pleasure at their own escape.

So great were the disasters that had overwhelmed Antioch at this time.  Trajan made his way out through a window of the room where he was.  Some being of more than human stature had approached him and led him forth, so that he survived with only a few small bruises.  As the shocks extended over a number of days, he lived out of doors in the hippodrome.  Casium itself, too, was so shaken that its peaks seemed to bend and break and to be falling upon the city.  Other hills settled, and quantities of water not previously in existence came to light, while quantities more escaped by flowing away.

[Sidenote:—­26—­] Trajan about spring time proceeded into the enemy’s country.  Now since the region near the Tigris is barren of timbers fit for shipbuilding, he brought the boats which had been constructed in the forests surrounding Nisibis on wagons to the river.  The vessels had been arranged in such a way that they could be taken apart and put together.  He had very hard work in bridging the stream opposite Mount Carduenum, for the opposing barbarians tried to hinder him.  Trajan, however, had a great abundance of both ships and soldiers, and so some boats were fastened together with great speed while others lay motionless in front of them, carrying heavy infantry and archers.  Still others kept making dashes this way and that, as if they intended to cross.  As a result of these tactics and from their very astonishment at seeing so many ships at once appear en masse from a land devoid of trees the barbarians gave way and the Romans crossed over.  They won possession of the whole of Adiabene.  (This is a portion of Assyria in the vicinity of Ninus; and Arbela and Gaugamela, close to which Alexander conquered Darius, are also in this same territory.  The country has also been called Atyria in the language of the barbarians, the double S being changed to T).