XXXIX. Now, however, I am going to write to you about the dearth, as you asked me. I did not, it is true, wish to set down anything regarding this, but I have constrained myself to do so, so that you don't think that I treated your order slightingly. Wheat was sold at this time at the rate of four modii for a dinar, and barley six modii. Chickpeas were five hundred numia a kab; beans, four hundred numia a kab; and lentils, three hundred and sixty numia a kab; but meat was not as yet dear. As time went on, however, the dearth became greater, and the pain of hunger afflicted the people more and more. Everything that was not edible was cheap, such as clothes and household utensils and furniture, for these things were sold for a half or a third of their value, and did not suffice for the maintenance of their owners, because of the great dearth of bread. At this time our father Mar Peter set out to visit the emperor (at Constantinople), in order to beg him to remit the tax. The governor, however, laid hold of the landed proprietors, and used great violence to them and extorted it from them, so that, before the bishop could persuade the emperor, the governor had sent the money to the capital. When the emperor saw that the money had arrived, he did not like to remit it; but, in order not to send our father away empty, he remitted two folles to the villagers, and the price which they were paying , whilst he freed the citizens from the obligation of drawing water for the Roman soldiery.