The Persians held their positions all the morning, until they heard the bugles blowing from the fortifications as a signal for the ration men to fetch the midday meal up to the trenches. As soon as Firouz calculated that the distribution of food was about to start, he launched the attack. Persian soldiers are accustomed to cat in the late afternoon, and consequently do not feel hungry until the sun is low in the sky, whereas the call of the Roman appetite comes when the bugle sounds at midday. However, Belisarius had anticipated a midday attack, and advised the troops to fill their bellies well at breakfast; so they fought none the worse. The Persian cavalry advanced to within bowshot of the Roman cavalry on the wings and began to shoot; and a mass of foot-archers also pressed forward into the re-entrant and began firing clouds of arrows at the Roman infantry and at the light cavalry in the trench-angles. These foot-archers moved forward in parallel single files, with a single pace's interval between files. As soon as the man at the head of each file had fired one arrow he retired to the rear and then gradually came again to the head of the file; and by this means a steady stream of arrows was maintained. They greatly outnumbered our own archers, but they suffered from three great disadvantages. First, the stiff bows that Belisarius's recruits were using had a greater range than their own lighter ones; next, the wind was blowing from the west, so that their arrows lost speed and fell short; lastly, they were being fired at from the front and both flanks and were tightly enough packed to make the most random Roman shooting effective. The pressure of fresh troops from behind urged them farther forward than they wished, and though this brought them into closer range, they lost the more heavily. A half-hearted attempt on the part of their spearmen to capture two of the bridges simultaneously failed; the javelin men drove them off. Hut, an hour or two later, both sides having exhausted their missile weapons, there were desperate battles at the bridges all along the line with lance and spear, and attempts to cross the trenches with planks. Belisarius broke one dangerous thrust with dismounted cavalry – the right-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, now recalled this side of the trench.
At last the attackers gained a slight advantage against Boutzes's Thracians on the left. They forced one of the bridges and managed to deploy on the other side. The enemy troops engaged were Saracen auxiliaries, well mounted and savage. Boutzes fought vigorously, but the issue was in doubt until the left-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, who, like the right-hand squadron, had now been recalled across the trench, galloped to their aid. They had just been provided with a supply of Persian arrows that a crowd of boys from the town had been hurriedly collecting from all sides and tying up in bundles of forty. The Saracens were driven back across the trench with great slaughter, and had no time to reform before Pharas and his half-squadron of Herulians unexpectedly charged them in the rear from the hill. It is said that Pharas's men did more damage, proportionately to their numbers, than any other force on the field that day. They were using their broadswords now, and between them and Boutzes's Thracians and the Massagetic Huns, the Persian cavalry of that wing lost 3,000 men. The survivors broke back to the main body; but Boutzes had no instructions as to pursuit and returned dutifully to his trench.
Belisarius immediately recalled the Massagetic Huns and Pharas's men. He embraced Pharas and completed the blood-brotherhood ceremony by allowing Pharas to suck an arrow-graze on the back of his hand. These fine fighters were now urgently needed on the other flank, where Firouz had just sent 'The Immortals' – the Royal Heavy-cavalry Corps, 10,000 strong – to break the defences at all costs. The Immortals succeeded in forcing two bridges. Our cavalry there, Armenians for the most part, then retreated slowly, but, according to instructions, diagonally away to the right. This left a clear field for a strong Roman counter-charge from the centre. The right-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, now remounted and joined by their compatriots fresh from their victory on the left wing, and by Pharas's Herulians, and by Belisarius's own incomparable Household Regiment, broke into a canter, and then into a gallop. Such was the weight of this charge, which caught the Persians in the flank, that it drove right through the column, breaking it into two unequal halves.
