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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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thousand are numbered in the tram of the prince of Mingrelia. The Colchian government has been always a pure and hereditary kingdom: and the authority of the sovereign is only restrained by the turbulence of his subjects. Whenever they were obedient, he could lead a numerous army into the field; but some faith is requisite to believe that the single tribe of the Suanians was composed of two hundred thousand soldiers, or that the population of Mingrelia now amounts to four millions of inhabitants.[1]
Revolutions of Colchos It was the boast of the Colchians, that their ancestors had checked the victories of Sesostris; and the defeat of the Egyptian is less incredible than his successful progress as far as the foot of mount Caucasus. They sunk, without any memorable effort, under the arms of Cyrus; followed in distant wars the standard of the great king; and presented him every fifth under the Persians, before Christ 500 year with one hundred boys and as many virgins, the fairest produce of the land.[2] Yet he accepted this gift like the gold and ebony of India, the frankincense of the Arabs, or the negroes and ivory of Æthiopia; the Colchians were not subject to the dominion of a satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well as substance of national independence.[3] After the fall of the Persian empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added Colchos 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 under the Romans before Christ 60 chains of gold, and delegated a servant in his place. In the pursuit of Mithridates, the Romans advanced to the banks of the Phasis, and their galleys ascended the river till they reached the camp of Pompey and his legions.[4] 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- ↑ Stabo. l. xi. p. 765 [2, § 19]. Lamberti, Relation de la Mingrélie. Yet we must avoid the contrary extreme of Chardin, who allows no more than 20,000 inhabitants to supply an annual exportation of 12,000 slaves: an absurdity unworthy of that judicious traveller.
- ↑ Herodot. l. iii. c. 97. See, in l. vii. c. 79, their arms and service in the expedition of Xerxes against Greece.
- ↑ Xenophon, who had encountered the Colchians in his retreat (Anabasis, l. iv. p. 320, 343, 348, edit. Hutchinson; and Fosters's Dissertation, p. 53-58, in Spelman's English version, vol. ii.), styles them αὐτόνομοι. Before the conquest of Mithridates, they are named by Appian ἔθνος ἀρείμανες (de Bell. Mithridatico, c. 15. tom. i. p. 661, of the last and best edition, by John Schweighæuser, Lipsiæ, 1785, 3 vols, large octavo).
- ↑ The conquest of Colchos bv Mithridates and Pompey is marked by Appian (de Bell. Mithridat.) and Plutarch (in Vit. Pomp.).
