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On the very morning of his accession, Jovian resumed the retreat begun by Julian. Though harassed by the Persians, the army succeeded in reaching the city of Dura on the banks of the Tigris. There the army came to a halt, hoping to cross the Tigris to reach the Empire on the western bank. When the attempt to bridge the river failed, he was forced to sue for a peace treaty on humiliating terms. According to Edward Gibbon, there were just sufficient provisions in the camp to last the army until the friendly province of Corduene, 100 miles to the north, if its movements were prompt and decisive. But Jovian delayed, and the supplies ran out while he was engaged in the negotiations, forcing him to comply with Shapur II's harsh terms. In exchange for an unhindered retreat to his own territory, he agreed to withdraw from the five Roman provinces east of the Tigris, conquered by Galerius in 298, that Diocletian had annexed, and to allow the Persians to occupy the fortresses of Nisibis, Castra Maurorum and Singara. The Romans also surrendered their interests in the Kingdom of Armenia to the Persians. The Christian king of Armenia, Arsaces II (Arshak II), was to stay neutral in future conflicts between the two empires and was forced to cede part of his kingdom to Shapur. The treaty was widely seen as a disgrace and Jovian rapidly lost popularity. The clamors and insults of the citizenry of Antioch, who were left destitute of security on an exposed frontier, impelled him to hasten his departure from that city.
After arriving at Antioch, Jovian decided to rush to Constantinople to consolidate his political position there, and he delayed only to conduct the funeral of Julian, who was honorably interred at Tarsus. While en route from there to the capital, after having received the allegiance of the western representatives at Tyana, Jovian was found dead in bed in his tent at Dadastana, halfway between Ancyra and Nicaea. His death was officially attributed to either a surfeit of mushrooms and wine, (his private life was notoriously dissipated) or the poisonous carbon monoxide fumes of a charcoal warming fire. However, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, a near-contemporary, suggests his death was suspicious and was strangely uninvestigated.
Jovian was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, along with his Christian predecessors.