XLIII. The governor blocked up the gates of the colonnades attached to the winter bath, and laid down in it straw and mats, and they used to sleep there, but it was not sufficient for them. When the grandees of the city saw this, they too established infirmaries, and many went in and found shelter in them. The Roman soldiers too set up places in which the sick slept, and charged themselves with their expenses. They died by a painful and melancholy death; and though many of them were buried every day, the number still went on increasing. For a report had gone forth throughout the province of Edessa, that the Edessenes took good care of those who were in want; and for this reason a countless multitude of people entered the city. The bath too that was under the Church of the Apostles, beside the Great Gate, was full of sick, and many dead bodies were carried forth from it every day. All the inhabitants of the city were careful to attend in a body the funeral of those who were carried forth from the ξενοδοχεῖον with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that were full of the hope of the resurrection. The women too (were there) with bitter weeping and loud cries. And at their head went the diligent shepherd Mar Peter; and with them too was the governor, and all the nobles. When these were buried, then every one came back, and accompanied the funeral of those who had died in his own neighbourhood. And when the graves of the ξενοδοχεῖον and the Church were full, the governor went forth and opened the old graves that were beside the church of Mar Kona, which had been constructed by the ancients with great pains, and they filled them. Then they opened others, and they were not sufficient for them; and at last they opened any old grave, no matter what, and filled it. For more than a hundred bodies were carried out every day from the ξενοδοχεῖον, and many a day a hundred and twenty, and up to a hundred and thirty, from the beginning of the latter Teshri (November) till the end of Adar (March). During that time nothing could be heard in all the streets of the city but either weeping over the dead or the lamentable cries of those in pain. Many too were dying in the courts of the (Great) Church, and in the courts of the city and in the inns: and they were dying also on the roads, as they were coming to enter the city. In the month of Shebat (February) too the dearth was very great, and the pestilence increased. Wheat was sold at the rate of thirteen kabs for a dinar, and barley eighteen kabs. A pound of meat was a hundred numia, and a pound of fowl three hundred numia, and an egg forty numia. In short there was a dearth of everything edible.