LXII. Then Kawad became furious, and armed the elephants which were with him, and set out, he and all his host, and came again to fight with Edessa, on the 24th of the month of Ilul (September), a Wednesday. He surrounded the city on all sides, more than on the former occasion, all its gates being open. Areobindus ordered the Roman soldiers not to fight with him, that no falsehood might appear on his part; but some few of the villagers who were in the city went out against him with slings, and smote many of his mail-clad warriors, whilst of themselves not one fell. His legions were daring enough to try to enter the city; but when they came near its gates, like an upraised mound of earth , they were humbled and repressed and turned back. Because, however, of the swiftness of the charge of their cavalry, the slingers became mixed up among them; and though the Persians were shooting arrows, and the Huns were brandishing maces, and the Arabs were levelling spears at them, they were unable to harm a single one of them; but like those Philistines who went up against Samson, 'who, though they were many and armed, were unable to slay him, whilst he, though destitute of weapons, slew a thousand of them with the jaw-bone of an ass, so also the Persians and Huns and Arabs, though they and their horses were falling by the stones which the slingers were throwing, were unable to slay even a single one of them. After they saw that they were able neither to enter the city nor to harm the unarmed men who were mixed up with them, they set fire to the church of S. Sergius and the church of the Confessors and to all the convents that had been left (standing), and to the church of (the village of) Negbath, which the people of the city had spared.