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 404 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xlii of the Phasis. Instead of being protected by the valour, Col- chos was insulted by the licentiousness, of foreign mercenaries ; the benefits of commerce were converted into base and vexa- tious monopoly ; and Gubazes, the native prince, was reduced to a pageant of royalty by the superior influence of the officers of Justinian. Disappointed in their expectations of Christian virtue, the indignant Lazi reposed some confidence in the justice of an unbeliever. After a private assurance that their ambas- sador should not be delivered to the Romans, they publicly solicited the friendship and aid of Chosroes. The sagacious monarch instantly discerned the use and importance of Colchos, and meditated a plan of conquest, which was renewed at the end of a thousand years by Shah Abbas, the wisest and most powerful of his successors. 05 His ambition was fired by the hope of launching a Persian navy from the Phasis, of command- ing the trade and navigation of the Euxine sea, of desolating the coast of Pontus and Bithynia, of distressing, perhaps of attacking, Constantinople, and of persuading the Barbarians of Europe to second his arms and counsels against the common enemy of mankind. Under the pretence of a Scythian war, he silently led his troops to the frontiers of Iberia; the Col- chian guides were prepared to conduct them through the woods and along the precipices of mount Caucasus ; and a narrow path was laboriously formed into a safe and spacious highway, for the march of cavalry, and even of elephants. Gubazes laid his person and diadem at the feet of the king of Persia; his Col- chians imitated the submission of their prince; and, after the walls of Petra had been shaken, the Roman garrison prevented, by a capitulation, the impending fury of the last assault. But the Lazi soon discovered that their impatience had urged them to choose an evil more intolerable than the calamities which they strove to escape. The monopoly of salt and corn was effectually removed by the loss of those valuable commodities. The authority of a Roman legislator was succeeded by the pride confused two rivers, the Cboruk and Bion, under the name Phasis. Dubois de Montp6reux (Voyage autour de Caucase, vol. 3, 86) identified Petra with an acropolis at Ujenar, some sixteen miles S.E. of the mouth of the Phasis.] 95 See the amusing letters of Pietro della Valle, the Koman traveller (Viaggi, torn. ii. 207, 209, 213, 215, 266, 286, 300 ; torn. iii. p. 54, 127). In the years 1618, 1619, and 1620, he conversed with Shah Abbas, and strongly encouraged a design which might have united Persia and Europe against their common enemy the Turk.