Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/462

 402 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xlii Visit of Arrian. A.D. 130 empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added Colchus 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 under the servant in his place. In the pursuit of Mithridates, the Eomans before advanced to the banks of the Phasis, and their galleys ascended the river till they reached the camp of Pompey and his legions. 89 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 90 was extinct, the eastern Pontus, which preserved his name, extended no farther than the neighbourhood of Trebizond. Beyond these limits the fortifications of Hyssus, of Apsarus, of the Phasis, of Dioscurias or Sebastopolis, and of Pityus were guarded by suffi- cient detachments of horse and foot ; and six princes of Colchos received their diadems from the lieutenants of Caesar. 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 con- sisted of four hundred chosen legionaries; the brick walls and towers, the double ditch, and the military engines on the rampart, rendered this palace 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defence. 91 As the strength of the empire was gradually impaired, the Eomans stationed on the Phasis were either withdrawn or expelled ; and the tribe of the Lazi, 92 whose posterity speak a foreign dialect and 15, torn. i. p. 661, of the last and best edition, by John Schweighseuser, Lipsiee, 1785, 3 vols, large octavo). 89 The conquest of Colchos by Mithridates and Pompey is marked by Appian (de Bell. Mithridat.) and Plutarch (in Vit. Pomp.). 90 We may trace the rise and fall of the family of Polemo, in Strabo (1. xi. p. 755 [2, § 3] ; 1. xii. p. 867 [3, § 29]), Dion Cassius or Xiphilin (p. 588, 593, 601, 719, 754, 915, 946, edit. Reimar [49, c. 25, 33, 44 ; 53, c. 25 ; 54, c. 24 ; 59, c. 12 ; 60, c. 8]), Suetonius (in Neron. c. 18, in Vespasian, c. 8), Eutropius (vii. 14), Josephus (Antiq. Judaic. 1. xx. c. 7, p. 970, edit. Havercamp), and Eusebius (Chron., with Scaliger, Animadvers. p. 196). 91 In the time of Procopius, there were no Roman forts on the Phasis. Pityus and Sebastopolis were evacuated on the rumour of the Persian (Goth. 1. iv. c. 4) ; but the latter was afterwards restored by Justinian (de iEdif. 1. iv. c. 7). 92 In the time of Pliny, Arrian, and Ptolemy, the Lazi were a particular tribe on the northern Bkirts of Colchos (Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. torn. ii. p. 222). In