A.D. 522. soon invaded by a formidable neighbour, who had acquired by arms and treaties the sovereignty of Iberia. The dependent king of Lazica received his sceptre at the hands of the Persian monarch, and the successors of Constantine acquiesced in this injurious claim, which was proudly urged as a right of immemorial prescription. In the beginning of the sixth century their influence was re- Conversion stored by the introduction of Christianity, which the Min- of the Lazi, grelians still profess with becoming zeal, without understanding the doctrines or observing the precepts of their religion. After the decease of his father, Zathus was exalted to the regal dignity by the favour of the Great King; but the pious youth abhorred the ceremonies of the Magi, and sought in the palace of Constantinople an orthodox baptism, a noble wife, and the alliance of the emperor Justin. The king of Lazica was solemnly invested with the diadem, and his cloak and tunic of white silk, with a gold border, displayed in rich embroidery the figure of his new patron, who soothed the jealousy of the Persian court, and excused the revolt of Colchis, by the venerable names of hospitality and religion. The common interest of both empires imposed on the Colchians the duty of guarding the passes of Mount Caucasus, where a wall of sixty miles is now defended by the monthly service of the musketeers of Mingrelia.82 Revolt and of the A.D. 542-549. But this honourable connection was soon corrupted by the avarice and ambition of the Romans. Degraded from the rank of allies, the Lazi were incessantly reminded by words and repentance actions of their dependent state. At the distance of a day's Colchians, journey beyond the Apsarus they beheld the rising fortress of Petra,83 which commanded the maritime country to the south of the Phasis. Instead of being protected by the valour, Colchis was insulted by the licentiousness, of foreign mercenaries; the benefits of commerce were converted into base and vexatious monopoly; and Gubazes, the native prince, was reduced to a pageant of royalty by the superior influence of the officers of Justinian. Disappointed in their expectations of Christian virtue, the indignant Lazi reposed some confidence in the justice of an unbeliever. After a private assurance that their ambassadors should not be delivered to the Romans, they publicly solicited the friendship and aid of Chosroes. 82 John Malala, Chron. tom. ii. p. 134–137 [ed. Oxon.; p. 412-414, ed. Bonn]; Theophanes, p. 144 [tom. i. p. 259, ed. Bonn]; Hist. Miscell. I. xv. p. 103. The fact is authentic, but the date seems too recent. In speaking of their Persian alliance, the Lazi contemporaries of Justinian employ the most obsolete wordsἐν γράμμασι μνημεῖα, Toyori, &c. Could they belong to a connection which had not been dissolved above twenty years? 83 The sole vestige of Petra subsists in the writings of Procopius and Agathias. Most of the towns and castles of Lazica may be found by comparing their names and position with the map of Mingrelia, in Lamberti. The sagacious monarch instantly discerned the use and importance. of Colchis, and meditated a plan of conquest which was renewed at the end of a thousand years by Shah Abbas, the wisest and most powerful of his successors.84 His ambition was fired by the hope of launching a Persian navy from the Phasis, of commanding the trade and navigation of the Euxine Sea, of desolating the coast of Pontus and Bithynia, of distressing, perhaps of attacking, Constantinople, and of persuading the barbarians of Europe to second his arms and counsels against the common enemy of mankind. Under the pretence of a Scythian war he silently led his troops to the frontiers of Iberia; the Colchian guides were prepared to conduct them through the woods and along the precipices of Mount Caucasus, and a narrow path was laboriously formed into a safe and spacious highway for the march of cavalry, and even of elephants. Gubazes laid his person and diadem at the feet of the king of Persia, his Colchians imitated the submission of their prince; and after the walls of Petra had been shaken, the Roman garrison prevented by a capitulation the impending fury of the last assault. But the Lazi soon discovered that their impatience had urged them to choose an evil more intolerable than the calamities which they strove to escape. The monopoly of salt and corn was effectually removed by the loss of those valuable commodities. The authority of a Roman legislator was succeeded by the pride of an Oriental despot, who beheld with equal disdain the slaves whom he had exalted, and the kings whom he had humbled before the footstool of his throne. The adoration of fire was introduced into Colchis by the zeal of the Magi, their intolerant spirit provoked the fervour of a Christian people, and the prejudice of nature or education was wounded by the impious practice of exposing the dead bodies of their parents on the summit of a lofty tower to the crows and vultures of the air. Conscious of the increasing hatred which retarded the execution of his great designs, the just Nushirvan had secretly given orders to assassinate the king of the Lazi, to transplant the people into some distant land, and to fix a faithful and warlike colony on the banks of the Phasis. The watchful jealousy of the Colchians foresaw and averted the approaching ruin. Their repent 85 84 See the amusing letters of Pietro della Valle, the Roman traveller (Viaggi, tom. ii. 207, 209, 213, 215, 266, 286, 300; tom. iii. p. 54, 127). In the years 1618, 1619, and 1620, he conversed with Shah Abbas, and strongly encouraged a design which might have united Persia and Europe against their common enemy the Turk. 85 See Herodotus (1. i. c. 140, p. 69), who speaks with diffidence, Larcher (tom. i. p. 399-401; Notes sur Herodote), Procopius (Persic. 1. i. c. 11 [tom. i. p. 56, ed. Bonn]), and Agathias (1. ii. p. 61, 62 [ed. Par.; p. 113 sq., ed. Bonn]). This practice, agreeable to the Zendavesta (Hyde, de Relig. Pers. c. 34, p. 414-421), demonstrates that the burial of the Persian kings (Xenophon, Cyropæd. 1. viii. [c. 7] p. 658), rí yàg ToÚTOV μxxagiwτspor Toũ tặ yḥ mixtñvei, is a Greek fiction, and that their tombs could be no more than cenotaphs. ance was accepted at Constantinople by the prudence, rather than the clemency, of Justinian; and he commanded Dagisteus, with seven thousand Romans and one thousand of the Zani," to expel the Persians from the coast of the Euxine. Siege of A.D. 549-551. The siege of Petra, which the Roman general with the aid of the Lazi immediately undertook, is one of the most remarkable actions of the age. The city was seated on a craggy Petra, rock, which hung over the sea, and communicated by a steep and narrow path with the land. Since the approach was difficult, the attack might be deemed impossible; the Persian conqueror had strengthened the fortifications of Justinian, and the places least inaccessible were covered by additional bulwarks. In this important fortress the vigilance of Chosroes had deposited a magazine of offensive and defensive arms sufficient for five times the number, not only of the garrison, but of the besiegers themselves. The stock of flour and salt provisions was adequate to the consumption of five years; the want of wine was supplied by vinegar, and grain from whence a strong liquor was extracted; and a triple aqueduct eluded the diligence and even the suspicions of the enemy. But the firmest defence of Petra was placed in the valour of fifteen hundred Persians, who resisted the assaults of the Romans, whilst in a softer vein of earth a mine was secretly perforated. The wall, supported by slender and temporary props, hung tottering in the air; but Dagisteus delayed the attack till he had secured a specific recompence, and the town was relieved before the return of his messenger from Constantinople. The Persian garrison was reduced to four hundred men, of whom no more than fifty were exempt from sickness or wounds; yet such had been their inflexible perseverance, that they concealed their losses from the enemy by enduring without a murmur the sight and putrefying stench of the dead bodies of their eleven hundred companions. After their deliverance the breaches were hastily stopped with sandbags, the mine was replenished with earth, a new wall was erected on a frame of substantial timber, and a fresh garrison of three thousand men was stationed at Petra to sustain the labours of a second siege. The operations, both of the attack and defence, were conducted with skilful obstinacy; and each party derived useful lessons from the experience of their past faults. A battering-ram was invented, of light construction and powerful effect; it was transported and worked by the hands of forty soldiers; and as the stones were loosened by its repeated strokes, they were torn with long iron hooks from the wall. From those walls a shower of darts was incessantly poured on the These seem the same people called Suanians, p. 197.-M. heads of the assailants, but they were most dangerously annoyed by a fiery composition of sulphur and bitumen, which in Colchis might with some propriety be named the oil of Medea. Of six thousand Romans who mounted the scaling-ladders, their general Bessas was the first, a gallant veteran of seventy years of age: the courage of their leader, his fall, and extreme danger, animated the irresistible effort of his troops, and their prevailing numbers oppressed the strength, without subduing the spirit, of the Persian garrison. The fate of these valiant men deserves to be more distinctly noticed. Seven hundred had perished in the siege, two thousand three hundred survived to defend the breach. One thousand and seventy were destroyed with fire and sword in the last assault; and if seven hundred and thirty were made prisoners, only eighteen among them were found without the marks of honourable wounds. The remaining five hundred escaped into the citadel, which they maintained without any hopes of relief, rejecting the fairest terms of capitulation and service till they were lost in the flames. They died in obedience to the commands of their prince, and such examples of loyalty and valour might excite their countrymen to deeds of equal despair and more prosperous event. The instant demolition of the works of Petra confessed the astonishment and apprehension of the conqueror. The Colchian or Lazic war, A Spartan would have praised and pitied the virtue of these heroic slaves; but the tedious warfare and alternate success of the Roman and Persian arms cannot detain the attention of A.D. 549-556. posterity at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The advantages obtained by the troops of Justinian were more frequent and splendid; but the forces of the Great King were continually supplied till they amounted to eight elephants and seventy thousand men, including twelve thousand Scythian allies and above three thousand Dilemites, who descended by their free choice from the hills of Hyrcania, and were equally formidable in close or in distant combat. The siege of Archæopolis, a name imposed or corrupted by the Greeks, was raised with some loss and precipitation, but the Persians occupied the passes of Iberia. Colchis was enslaved by their forts and garrisons, they devoured the scanty sustenance of the people, and the prince of the Lazi fled into the mountains. In the Roman camp faith and discipline were unknown, and the independent leaders, who were invested with equal power, disputed with each other the preeminence of vice and corruption. The Persians followed without a murmur the commands of a single chief, who implicitly obeyed the instructions of their supreme lord. Their general was distinguished among the heroes of the East by his wisdom in council and his valour in the field. The advanced age of Mermeroes, and the lameness of both his feet, could not diminish the activity of his mind or even of his body; and, whilst he was carried in a litter in the front of battle, he inspired terror to the enemy, and a just confidence to the troops, who under his banners were always successful. After his death the command devolved to Nacoragan, a proud satrap who, in a conference with the Imperial chiefs, had presumed to declare that he disposed of victory as absolutely as of the ring on his finger. Such presumption was the natural cause and forerunner of a shameful defeat. The Romans had been gradually repulsed to the edge of the sea-shore; and their last camp, on the ruins of the Grecian colony of Phasis, was defended on all sides by strong entrenchments, the river, the Euxine, and a fleet of galleys. Despair united their counsels and invigorated their arms; they withstood the assault of the Persians, and the flight of Nacoragan preceded or followed the slaughter of ten thousand of his bravest soldiers. He escaped from the Romans to fall into the hands of an unforgiving master, who severely chastised the error of his own choice: the unfortunate general was flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed into the human form, was exposed on a mountain-a dreadful warning to those who might hereafter be intrusted with the fame and fortune of Persia.86 Yet the prudence of Chosroes insensibly relinquished the prosecution of the Colchian war, in the just persuasion that it is impossible to reduce, or at least to hold, a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants. The fidelity of Gubazes sustained the most rigorous trials. He patiently endured the hardships of a savage life, and rejected with disdain the specious temptations of the Persian court. The king of the Lazi had been educated in the Christian religion; his mother was the daughter of a senator; during his youth he had served ten years a silentiary of the Byzantine palace,87 and the arrears of an unpaid salary were a motive of attachment as well as of complaint. But the long continuance of his sufferings extorted from him a naked representation of the truth, and truth was an unpardonable libel on the lieutenants of Justinian, who, amidst the delays of a ruinous war, had spared his enemies and trampled on his allics. 86 The punishment of flaying alive could not be introduced into Persia by Sapor (Brisson, de Regn. Pers. 1. ii. p. 578), nor could it be copied from the foolish tale of Marsyas the Phrygian piper, most foolishly quoted as a precedent by Agathias (1. iv. p. 132, 133). 87 In the palace of Constantinople there were thirty silentiaries, who are styled hastati ante fores cubiculi, της [ἀμφὶ τὸν βασιλέα] σιγῆς ἐπιστάται, an honourable title which conferred the rank, without imposing the duties, of a senator (Cod. Theodos. 1. vi. tit. 23; Gothofred. Comment. tom. ii. p. 129). According to Agathias the death of Gubazes preceded the defeat of Nacoragan. The trial took place after the battle. --M. |