ron 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.

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 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 Archaeopolis, a name imposed or corrupted by the Greeks, was
raised with some loss and precipitation; but the Persians occupied the
passes of Iberia: Colchos 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 disci