not been seasonably recalled to the defence of the East. While Chosroes
pursued his ambitious designs on the coast of the Euxine, Belisarius,
at the head of an army without pay or discipline, encamped beyond the
Euphrates, within six miles of Nisibis. He meditated, by a skilful
operation, to draw the Persians from their impregnable citadel, and
improving his advantage in the field, either to intercept their retreat,
or perhaps to enter the gates with the flying Barbarians. He advanced
one day's journey on the territories of Persia, reduced the fortress of
Sisaurane, and sent the governor, with eight hundred chosen horsemen,
to serve the emperor in his Italian wars. He detached Arethas and his
Arabs, supported by twelve hundred Romans, to pass the Tigris, and to
ravage the harvests of Assyria, a fruitful province, long exempt from
the calamities of war. But the plans of Belisarius were disconcerted by
the untractable spirit of Arethas, who neither returned to the camp,
nor sent any intelligence of his motions. The Roman general was fixed
in anxious expectation to the same spot; the time of action elapsed, the
ardent sun of Mesopotamia inflamed with fevers the blood of his European
soldiers; and the stationary troops and officers of Syria affected to
tremble for the safety of their defenceless cities. Yet this diversion
had already succeeded in forcing Chosroes to return with loss and
precipitation; and if the skill of Belisarius had been seconded by
discipline and valor, his success might have satisfied the sanguine
wishes of the public, who required at his hands the conquest of
Ctesiphon, and the deliverance of the captives of Antioch. At the end of
the campaign, he was recalled to Constantinople by an ungrateful court,
but the dangers of the ensuing spring restored his confidence and
command; and the hero, almost alone, was despatched, with the speed of
post-horses, to repel, by his name and presence, the invasion of Syria.
He found the Roman generals, among whom was a nephew of Justinian,
imprisoned by their fears in the fortifications of Hierapolis. But
instead of listening to their timid counsels, Belisarius commanded them
to follow him to Europus, where he had resolved to collect his forces,
and to execute whatever God should inspire him to achieve against
the enemy. His firm attitude on the banks of the Euphrates restrained
Chosroes from advancing towards Palestine; and he received with art and
dignity the ambassadors, or rather spies, of the Persian monarch. The
plain between Hierapolis and the river was covered with the squadrons of
cavalry, six thousand hunters, tall and robust, who pursued their
game without the apprehension of an enemy. On the opposite bank the
ambassadors descried a thousand Armenian horse, who appeared to guard
the passage of the Euphrates. The tent of Belisarius was of the coarsest
linen, the simple equipage of a warrior who disdained the luxury of the
East. Around his tent, the nations who marched under his standard were
arranged with skilful confusion. The Thracians and Illyrians were posted
in the front, the Heruli and Goths in the centre; the prospect was
closed by the Moors and Vandals, and their loose array seemed to
multiply their numbers. Their dress was light and active; one soldier
carried a whip, another a sword, a third a bow, a fourth, perhaps,
a battle axe, and the whole picture exhibited the intrepidity of the
troops and the vigilance of the general. Chosroes was deluded by
the address, and awed by the genius, of the lieutenant of Justinian.
Conscious of the merit, and ignorant of the force, of his antagonist,
he dreaded a decisive battle in a distant country, from whence not
a Persian might return to relate the melancholy tale. The great king
hastened to repass the Euphrates; and Belisarius pressed his retreat, by
affecting to oppose a measure so salutary to the empire, and which could
scarcely have been prevented by an army of a hundred thousand men. Envy
might suggest to ignorance and pride, that the public enemy had been
suffered to escape: but the African and Gothic triumphs are less
glorious than this safe and bloodless victory, in which neither fortune,
nor the valor of the soldiers, can subtract any part of the general's
renown. The second removal of Belisarius from the Persian to the Italian
war revealed the extent of his personal merit, which had corrected or
supplied the want of discipline and courage. Fifteen generals, without
concert or skill, led through the mountains of Armenia an army of thirty
thousand Romans, inattentive to their signals, their ranks, and their
ensigns. Four thousand Persians, intrenched in the camp of Dubis,
vanquished, almost without a combat, this disorderly multitude; their
useless arms were scattered along the road, and their horses sunk under
the fatigue of their rapid flight. But the Arabs of the Roman party
prevailed over their brethren; the Armenians returned to their
allegiance; the cities of Dara and Edessa resisted a sudden assault and
a regular siege, and the calamities of war were suspended by those
of pestilence. A tacit or formal agreement between the two sovereigns
protected the tranquillity of the Eastern frontier; and the arms of
Chosroes were confined to the Colchian or Lazic war, which has been too
minutely described by the historians of the times.
The extreme length of the Euxine Sea from Constantinople to the mouth of
the Phasis, may be computed as a voyage of nine days, and a measure
of seven hundred miles. From the Iberian Caucasus, the most lofty
and craggy mountains of Asia, that river descends with such oblique
vehemence, that in a short space it is traversed by one hundred and
twenty bridges. Nor does the stream become placid and navigable, till it
reaches the town of Sarapana, five days' journey from the Cyrus, which
flows from the same hills, but in a contrary direction to the Caspian
Lake. The proximity of these rivers has suggested the practice, or at
least the idea, of wafting the precious merchandise of India down the
Oxus, over the Caspian, up the Cyrus, and with the current of the Phasis
into the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas. As it successively collects the
streams of the plain of Colchos, the Phasis moves with diminished speed,
though accumulated weight. At the mouth it is sixty fathom deep, and
half a league broad, but a small woody island is interposed in the midst
of the channel; the water, so soon as it has deposited an earthy or
metallic sediment, floats on the surface of the waves, and is no longer
susceptible of corruption. In a course of one hundred miles, forty of
which are navigable for large vessels, the Phasis divides the celebrated
region of Colchos, or Mingrelia, which, on three sides, is fortified
by the Iberian and Armenian mountains, and whose maritime coast extends
about two hundred miles from the neighborhood of Trebizond to Dioscurias
and the confines of Circassia. Both the soil and climate are relaxed
by excessive moisture: twenty-eight rivers, besides the Phasis and his
dependent streams, convey their waters to the sea; and the hollowness
of the ground appears to indicate the subterraneous channels between the
Euxine and the Caspian. In the fields where wheat or barley is sown, the
earth is too soft to sustain the action of the plough; but the _gom_,
a small grain, not unlike the millet or coriander seed, supplies the
ordinary food of the people; and the use of bread is confined to the
prince and his nobles. Yet the vintage is more plentiful than the
harvest; and the bulk of the stems, as well as the quality of the wine,
display the unassisted powers of nature. The same powers continually
tend to overshadow the face of the country with thick forests; the
timber of the hills, and the flax of the plains, contribute to the
abundance of naval stores; the wild and tame animals, the horse, the ox,
and the hog, are remarkably prolific, and the name of the pheasant is
expressive of his native habitation on the banks of the Phasis. The gold
mines to the south of Trebizond, which are still worked with sufficient
profit, were a subject of national dispute between Justinian and
Chosroes; and it is not unreasonable to believe, that a vein of precious
metal may be equally diffused through the circle of the hills, although
these secret treasures are neglected by the laziness, or concealed by
the prudence, of the Mingrelians. The waters, impregnated with particles
of gold, are carefully strained through sheep-skins or fleeces; but this
expedient, the groundwork perhaps of a marvellous fable, affords a
faint image of the wealth extracted from a virgin earth by the power
and industry of ancient kings. Their silver palaces and golden chambers
surpass our belief; but the fame of their riches is said to have excited
the enterprising avarice of the Argonauts. Tradition has affirmed, with
some color of reason, that Egypt planted on the Phasis a learned and
polite colony, which manufactured linen, built navies, and invented
geographical maps. The ingenuity of the moderns has peopled, with
flourishing cities and nations, the isthmus between the Euxine and the
Caspian; and a lively writer, observing the resemblance of climate, and,
in his apprehension, of trade, has not hesitated to pronounce Colchos
the Holland of antiquity.
But the riches of Colchos shine only through the darkness of conjecture
or tradition; and its genuine history presents a uniform scene of
rudeness and poverty. If one hundred and thirty languages were spoken
in the market of Dioscurias, they were the imperfect idioms of so many
savage tribes or families, sequestered from each other in the valleys of
Mount Caucasus; and their separation, which diminished the importance,
must have multiplied the number, of their rustic capitals. In the
present state of Mingrelia, a village is an assemblage of huts within
a wooden fence; the fortresses are seated in the depths of forests; the
princely town of Cyta, or Cotatis, consists of two hundred houses, and a
stone edifice appertains only to the magnificence of kings. Twelve ships
from Constantinople, and about sixty barks, laden with the fruits of
industry, annually cast anchor on the coast; and the list of Colchian
exports is much increased, since the natives had only slaves and hides
to offer in exchange for the corn and salt which they purchased from
the subjects of Justinian. Not a vestige can be found of the art, the
knowledge, or the navigation, of the ancient Colchians: few Greeks
desired or dared to pursue the footsteps of the Argonauts; and even the
marks of an Egyptian colony are lost on a nearer approach. The rite of
circumcision is practised only by the Mahometans of the Euxine; and the
curled hair and swarthy complexion of Africa no longer disfigure the
most perfect of the human race. It is in the adjacent climates of
Georgia, Mingrelia, and Circassia, that nature has placed, at least to
our eyes, the model of beauty in the shape of the limbs, the color
of the skin, the symmetry of the features, and the expression of the
countenance. According to the destination of the two sexes, the men
seemed formed for action, the women for love; and the perpetual supply
of females from Mount Caucasus has purified the blood, and improved
the breed, of the southern nations of Asia. The proper district of
Mingrelia, a portion only of the ancient Colchos, has long sustained
an exportation of twelve thousand slaves. The number of prisoners or
criminals would be inadequate to the annual demand; but the common
people are in a state of servitude to their lords; the exercise of
fraud or rapine is unpunished in a lawless community; and the market is
continually replenished by the abuse of civil and paternal authority.
Such a trade, which reduces the human species to the level of cattle,
may tend to encourage marriage and population, since the multitude of
children enriches their sordid and inhuman parent. But this source of
impure wealth must inevitably poison the national manners, obliterate
the sense of honor and virtue, and almost extinguish the instincts of
nature: the _Christians_ of Georgia and Mingrelia are the most dissolute
of mankind; and their children, who, in a tender age, are sold into
foreign slavery, have already learned to imitate the rapine of the
father and the prostitution of the mother. Yet, amidst the rudest
ignorance, the untaught natives discover a singular dexterity both of
mind and hand; and although the want of union and discipline exposes
them to their more powerful neighbors, a bold and intrepid spirit has
animated the Colchians of every age. In the host of Xerxes, they served
on foot; and their arms were a dagger or a javelin, a wooden casque, and
a buckler of raw hides. But in their own country the use of cavalry has
more generally prevailed: the meanest of the peasants disdained to walk;
the martial nobles are possessed, perhaps, of two hundred horses;
and above five thousand are numbered in the train of the prince of
Mingrelia. The Colchian government has been always a pure and hereditary
kingdom; and the authority of the sovereign is only restrained by the
turbulence of his subjects. Whenever they were obedient, he could lead
a numerous army into the field; but some faith is requisite to believe,
that the single tribe of the Suanians as composed of two hundred
thousand soldiers, or that the population of Mingrelia now amounts to
four millions of inhabitants.
Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.--Part IV.
It was the boast of the Colchians, that their ancestors had checked
the victories of Sesostris; and the defeat of the Egyptian is less
incredible than his successful progress as far as the foot of Mount
Caucasus. They sunk without any memorable effort, under the arms of
Cyrus; followed in distant wars the standard of the great king, and
presented him every fifth year with one hundred boys, and as many
virgins, the fairest produce of the land. Yet he accepted this _gift_
like the gold and ebony of India, the frankincense of the Arabs, or the
negroes and ivory of ∆thiopia: the Colchians were not subject to the
dominion of a satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well
as substance of national independence. After the fall of the Persian
empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added Colchos to the wide circle
of his dominions on the Euxine; and when the natives presumed to request
that his son might reign over them, he bound the ambitious youth in
chains of gold, and delegated a servant in his place. In pursuit of
Mithridates, the Romans advanced to the banks of the Phasis, and their
galleys ascended the river till they reached the camp of Pompey and
his legions. But the senate, and afterwards the emperors, disdained to
reduce that distant and useless conquest into the form of a province.
The family of a Greek rhetorician was permitted to reign in Colchos and
the adjacent kingdoms from the time of Mark Antony to that of Nero;
and after the race of Polemo was extinct, the eastern Pontus, which
preserved his name, extended no farther than the neighborhood of
Trebizond. Beyond these limits the fortifications of Hyssus, of Apsarus,
of the Phasis, of Dioscurias or Sebastopolis, and of Pityus, were
guarded by sufficient detachments of horse and foot; and six princes
of Colchos received their diadems from the lieutenants of CÊsar. One of
these lieutenants, the eloquent and philosophic Arrian, surveyed,
and has described, the Euxine coast, under the reign of Hadrian. The
garrison which he reviewed at the mouth of the Phasis consisted of
four hundred chosen legionaries; the brick walls and towers, the double
ditch, and the military engines on the rampart, rendered this place
inaccessible to the Barbarians: but the new suburbs which had been built
by the merchants and veterans, required, in the opinion of Arrian, some
external defence. As the strength of the empire was gradually impaired,
the Romans stationed on the Phasis were neither withdrawn nor expelled;
and the tribe of the Lazi, whose posterity speak a foreign dialect, and
inhabit the sea coast of Trebizond, imposed their name and dominion on
the ancient kingdom of Colchos. Their independence was soon invaded by
a formidable neighbor, 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 restored by the introduction of Christianity, which the
Mingrelians 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
favor 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 Colchos, 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.
But this honorable 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 actions, of their dependent state.
At the distance of a day's journey beyond the Apsarus, they beheld the
rising fortress of Petra, which commanded the maritime country to the
south of the Phasis. Instead of being protected by the valor, Colchos
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. The sagacious
monarch instantly discerned the use and importance of Colchos; 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.
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 Colchos by the zeal
of the Magi: their intolerant spirit provoked the fervor 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 Nashirvan 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 repentance was accepted at Constantinople by the prudence,
rather than 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.
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 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 of 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 valor 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 recompense; 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 sand-bags; 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 labors 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 heads of the assailants; but
they were most dangerously annoyed by a fiery composition of sulphur and
bitumen, which in Colchos 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 honorable 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 valor 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.