m at Daras, as has been stated above. And among the
Goths, Vittigis remained in Byzantium, but all the rest marched with
Belisarius against Chosroes. At that time one of the envoys of Vittigis,
he who was assuming the name of bishop, died in the land of Persia, and
the other one remained there. And the man who followed them as
interpreter withdrew to the land of the Romans, and John, who was
commanding the troops in Mesopotamia, arrested him near the boundaries
of Constantina, and bringing him into the city confined him in a prison;
there the man in answer to his enquiries related everything which had
been done. Such, then, was the course of these events. And Belisarius
and his followers went in haste, since he was eager to anticipate
Chosroes' making any second invasion into the land of the Romans.

XV

But in the meantime Chosroes was leading his army against Colchis, where
the Lazi were calling him in for the following reason. The Lazi at first
dwelt in the land of Colchis as subjects of the Romans, but not to the
extent of paying them tribute or obeying their commands in any respect,
except that, whenever their king died, the Roman emperor would send
emblems of the office to him who was about to succeed to the throne. And
he, together with his subjects, guarded strictly the boundaries of the
land in order that hostile Huns might not proceed from the Caucasus
mountains, which adjoin their territory, through Lazica and invade the
land of the Romans. And they kept guard without receiving money or
troops from the Romans and without ever joining the Roman armies, but
they were always engaged in commerce by sea with the Romans who live on
the Black Sea. For they themselves have neither salt nor grain nor any
other good thing, but by furnishing skins and hides and slaves they
secured the supplies which they needed. But when the events came to pass
in which Gourgenes, the king of the Iberians, was concerned, as has been
told in the preceding narrative[13], Roman soldiers began to be
quartered among the Lazi; and these barbarians were annoyed by the
soldiers, and most of all by Peter, the general, a man who was prone to
treat insolently those who came into contact with him. This Peter was a
native of Arzanene, which is beyond the River Nymphius, a district
subject to the Persians from of old, but while still a child he had been
captured and enslaved by the Emperor Justinus at the time when Justinus,
after the taking of Am