ressed 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