he 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. [64]

[Footnote 63: In the public history of Procopius, (Persic. l. ii. c. 16,
18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28;) and, with some slight exceptions,
we may reasonably shut our ears against the malevolent whisper of the
Anecdotes, (c. 2, 3, with the Notes, as usual, of Alemannus.)]

[Footnote 64: The Lazic war, the contest of Rome and Persia on the
Phasis, is tediously spun through many a page of Procopius (Persic. l.
ii. c. 15, 17, 28, 29, 30.) Gothic. (l. iv. c. 7--16) and Agathias, (l.
ii. iii. and iv. p. 55--132, 141.)]

The extreme length of the Euxine Sea [65] 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, [66] or Mingrelia,
[67] which, on three sides, is fortified by the Iberian and Armenian
mountains, and whose maritime coast extends abo