Heliodorus\' Aethiopica

[Nathan Ross]

If this is the true then Ephraim’s account is taken up and exaggerated to the extent that it becomes fact. Julian subverts it by adapting it into a Classical style replete with Trojans and Greeks and by doing so slyly mocks the Christian tendency to attribute God in everything.

Possibly, although it would have had to be very sly - Julian was still supposedly a Christian himself at this point, and Constantius was not well known for his levity!

This Ephraim-Julian-Heliodorus link seems fairly plausible though, if we see it perhaps as a process of successive imaginative amplification. Unless there's some other evidence for Shapur using ships or rafts against the walls of Nisibis, I would be inclined to see this as Julian's own invention. Perhaps he was quoting some other story or episode from history? - few if any of his audience would have witnessed the actual siege, and imperial panegyric is not known for its strict fidelity to historical fact!

Considering my scepticism about cavalry as bulldozer...

At the risk of veering this one back towards the various current cavalry threads, I would have to say I'm a lot less sceptical! We have, I think, sufficient evidence that cataphracts, and more particularly clibanarii, were intended as a 'shock' weapon against formations of infantry. How effective they were in this role can be debated, but if this was not their purpose they seem rather redundant...