hope of launching a Persian navy from the Phasis, of commanding 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 Colchian 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 Colchians 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 of an Oriental despot, who beheld, with equal disdain, the slaves whom he had exalted and the kings whom he had humbled before the footstool of his throne. The adoration of fire was introduced into Colchos by the zeal of the Magi; their intolerant spirit provoked the fervour of a Christian people; and the prejudice of nature or education was wounded by the impious practice of exposing the dead bodies of their parents, on the summit of a lofty tower, to the crows and vultures of the air.[1] Conscious of the increasing hatred, which retarded the execution of his great designs, the just Nushirvan had secretly given orders to assassinate the king of the Lazi, to transplant the people into some distant land, and to fix a faithful and warlike colony on the banks of the Phasis. The watchful jealousy of the Colchians foresaw and averted the approaching
- ↑ See Herodotus (l. i. c. 140, p. 69), who speaks with diffidence, Larcher (tom. i. p. 399-401. Notes sur Herodote), Procopius (Persic. l. i. c. 11), and Agathias (l. ii. p. 61, 62). This practice, agreeable to the Zendavesta (Hyde, de Relig. Pers. c. 34, p. 414-421), demonstrates that the burial of the Persian kings (Xenophon, Cyropæd. l. viii. p. 658 [c. 7]), τί γὰρ τούτου μακαριώτερον τον̂ τῃ̑ γῃ̑ μιχθη̂ναι; is a Greek fiction, and that their tombs could be no more than cenotaphs.
tom. ii. 207, 209, 213, 215, 266, 286, 300; tom. 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.
