In the year 1117 from the founding of the City, Jovian, the thirty-seventh, was made emperor by the army at a moment of the gravest crisis; and since, trapped by the unfavourable ground and hemmed in by the enemy, he could find no means of escape, he concluded a treaty with Shapur, king of the Persians — less than honourable, as some think, but necessary enough;
1 Anno ab urbe condita MCXVII Iouianus tricesimus septimus imperator in summo rerum discrimine ab exercitu creatus cum et locorum iniquitate captus et hostibus circumsaeptus nullam euadendi facultatem nancisceretur, foedus cum Sapore Persarum rege, etsi parum ut putant dignum, satis tamen necessarium pepigit:
for, in order to deliver the Roman army safe and unharmed not only from the attacks of the enemy but also from the dangers of the terrain, he ceded to the Persians the town of Nisibis and part of upper Mesopotamia.
2 quippe, ut tutum et incolumem Romanum exercitum non solum ab incursu hostium uerum etiam a locorum periculo liberaret, Nisibi oppidum et partem superioris Mesopotamiae Persis concessit.
Then, while he was making his way through Galatia on his return to Illyricum, he retired to sleep in a certain new bedchamber, and, overcome and suffocated by the heat of the coals and the fumes from the walls lately plastered with lime, he ended his life in only the eighth month after he had begun to reign.
3 inde dum ad Illyricum rediens per Galatiam iter agit, cum in cubiculum quoddam nouum sese cubitum recepisset, calore prunarum et nidore parietum nuper calce inlitorum adgrauatus et suffocatus, octauo demum mense quam imperare coeperat uitam finiuit.