Now there is a place beyond the boundary of Apsilia on the road into Abasgia of the following description: a lofty ridge runs out from the Caucasus, and gradually sinks, as it runs along, to a lower level, resembling in a way a ladder, until it comes to an end at the Euxine Sea. And the Abasgi in ancient times built an exceedingly strong fortress of very considerable size on the lower slope of this mountain.
Here they always take refuge and repel the inroads of their enemies, who are in no way able to storm the difficult position. Indeed there is only one path leading to this fortress and to the rest of the land of the Abasgi, and this happens to be impassable for men marching by twos. For there is no possibility of getting along there except in single file and on foot, and that with difficulty. Above this path rises the side of an exceedingly rough gorge which extends from the fortress to the sea. And the place bears a name worthy of the gorge, for the inhabitants call it Trachea, using a Greek word.
So the Roman fleet put in between the boundaries of the Abasgi and Apsilii, and John and Uligagus disembarked their troops and proceeded on foot, while the sailors followed the army along the coast with all the boats. And when they came close to Trachea, they beheld the entire force of the Abasgi fully armed and standing in order along the whole gorge above the path which I have just mentioned, whereupon they fell into great perplexity because they were quite unable to handle the situation before them, until John, after reasoning long with himself, discovered a remedy for the trouble. For leaving Uligagus there with the half of the army, he himself took the others and manned the boats. And by rowing they rounded the place where Trachea was and passed it entirely and thus got in the rear of the enemy. Thereupon the Romans raised their standards and advanced. The Abasgi, then, seeing their enemy pressing upon them from both sides, no longer offered resistance nor even kept their ranks, but turning to withdraw in a very disorderly retreat they kept moving forward, but so impeded were they by their fear and the helplessness resulting therefrom that they were no longer able to find their way about the rough terrain of their native haunts, nor could they easily get away from the place. The Romans meanwhile were following them up from either side and caught and killed many. And they reached the fortress on the run together with the fugitives and found the small gate there still open; for the guards could by no means shut the gates, since they were still taking in the fugitives. So pursued and pursuers mingled together were all rushing toward the gate, the former eager to save themselves, the latter to capture the fortress. Finding then the gates open, they charged through them together: for the gate-keepers were neither able to distinguish the Abasgi from the enemy nor to shut the gates to with the throng overpowering them.
And the Abasgi for their part, though feeling relief at getting inside the fortress, were actually being captured with the fortress, while the Romans, thinking they had mastered their opponents, found themselves involved there in a more difficult struggle. For the houses were numerous and not very far apart from each other — indeed they were even crowded close enough together so that they resembled a wall all round, and the Abasgi mounted them and defended themselves with all their strength by hurling missiles upon the heads of their enemy, struggling with might and main and filled with terror and with pity for their children and women, and consequently overcome with despair, until it occurred to the Romans to fire the houses. They accordingly set fire to them on all sides, and thus were completely victorious in this struggle. Now Opsites, the ruler of the Abasgi, succeeded in making his escape with only a few men, and withdrew to the neighbouring Huns and the Caucasus mountains. But the others were either charred and burned to ashes with their houses or fell into the hands of their enemy. The Romans also captured the women of their rulers with all their offspring, razed the defences of the fortress to the ground, and rendered the land desolate to a great distance. For the Abasgi, then, this was the result of their revolution. But among the Apsilii the following took place.
X
The Apsilii have been subjects of the Lazi from ancient times. Now there is in this country an exceedingly strong fortress which the natives call Tzibile. But one among the notables of the Lazi, Terdetes by name, who held the office of “magister,” as it is called, in this nation, had had a falling out with Gubazes, the king of the Lazi, and was hostile to him; accordingly he secretly promised the Persians to hand over this particular fortress to them, and he came into Apsilia leading an army of Persians to accomplish this object. Then, when they came close to the fortress, he himself went ahead with his Lazic followers and got inside the fortifications, because those keeping guard there could in no way disobey the commander of the Lazi, feeling as they did no suspicion of him. Thus when the Persian army arrived Terdetes received it into the fortress. And as a result of this the Medes considered that not Lazica alone, but also Apsilia was held by them. Meanwhile neither the Romans nor the Lazi were in a position to defend the Apsilii, being hard pressed, as they were, by the task of dealing with Petra and the Median army.
But there was a certain woman who was the wife of the commander of the garrison there, one of the Apsilii, an exceedingly comely person to look upon. With this woman the commander of the Persian army suddenly fell violently in love, and at first he began to make advances, but after that, since he met with no encouragement from the woman, he attempted with no hesitation to force her. At this the husband of the woman became exceedingly enraged, and at night he slew both the commander and all those who had entered the fortress with him, who thus became incidentally victims of their commander’s lust, and he himself took charge of the fortress. On account of this affair the Apsilii revolted from the Colchians, alleging against them that, whilst the Apsilii were being oppressed by the Persians, they had been altogether unwilling to champion their cause. But Gubazes sent a thousand Romans and John the son of Thomas, whom I have recently mentioned, against them; this man succeeded, after long efforts at conciliation, in winning them over without a fight and made them once more subjects of the Lazi. Such was the story of the Apsilii and the fortress of Tzibile.
At about this time it came about that Chosroes through his inhumanity did not remain unscathed even as regards his own offspring. For the eldest of his sons named Anasozadus (this means in the Persian tongue “Immortal”) chanced to have a falling out with him, having been guilty of many breaches of conduct, and in particular having consorted with the wives of his father without the least hesitation. At first then Chosroes punished his son by banishment. Now there is a certain land in Persia called Vazaine, an exceedingly good country, in which the city named Belapaton is situated, seven days’ journey distant from Ctesiphon. There at the command of his father this Anasozadus was living.
But at that time it so fell out that Chosroes became very violently ill, so that it was actually said that he had passed from the world; for Chosroes was by nature of a sickly disposition. Certain it is that he often gathered around him physicians from all parts, among whom was the physician Tribunus, a Palestinian by birth. This Tribunus was a man of great learning and inferior to none in medical skill, and was furthermore a temperate and God-fearing man of the highest worth. On one occasion he had cured Chosroes of a serious illness, and when he departed from the land of the Persians, he carried with him many and notable gifts from his patient. When, accordingly, the truce preceding the present one was made, Chosroes demanded of the Emperor Justinian that he give him this Tribunus to live with him for a year. This demand having been granted him, as stated by me above, Chosroes bade Tribunus ask for whatever he wanted. And he asked for nothing else in the world except that Chosroes should release for him some of the Roman captives. So he released three thousand for him, and besides these all whom he requested by name as being notable men among the captives, and as a result of this incident Tribunus won great renown among all men. Thus did these events take place.
When Anasozadus learned of the disease which had fallen upon his father, he began to stir up a revolution by way of usurping the royal powe
r. And though his father recovered, he nevertheless set the city in revolt himself, and taking up arms against him went forth fully prepared for battle. When Chosroes heard this, he sent against him an army with Phabrizus as general. So Phabrizus having been victorious in the battle made Anasozadus captive and brought him before Chosroes not long afterward. And he caused the eyes of his son to be disfigured, not destroying their sight but distorting both the upper and lower lids in a very ugly fashion. For he heated a sort of iron needle in the fire and with this seared the outside of his son’s eyes when they were shut, thus marring the beauty of the lids. Now Chosroes did this with only one end in view, that his son’s hope of achieving the royal power might be frustrated. For the law does not permit a man who has a disfigurement to become king over the Persians, as has been stated by me in the preceding narrative also.
XI
[550 A D.] As for Anasozadus, then, his fortune and his character brought him to this. And when the fifth year of the truce had now come to an end, the Emperor Justinian sent Petrus, a patrician and holding the office of “Magister,” to Chosroes, in order that they might arrange in every detail the treaty for the settlement of the East. But Chosroes sent him away, promising that after no long time he would be followed by the man who would arrange these matters in a manner advantageous to both parties. And not long afterwards he sent Isdigousnas for the second time, a man of pretentious demeanour and filled with a kind of unspeakable villainy, whose pompous puffing and blowing no one of the Romans could bear. And he brought with him his wife and daughters and his brother, and was followed by a huge throng of retainers. One would have supposed that the good men were going out for battle. In his company also were two of the most notable men among the Persians, who actually wore golden diadems on their heads. And it irritated the people of Byzantium that the Emperor Justinian did not receive him simply as an ambassador, but counted him worthy of much more friendly attention and magnificence.
But Braducius did not come again with him to Byzantium, for they say that Chosroes had removed him from the world, laying no other charge against the man than that he had been a table-companion of the Roman emperor. “For,” said he, “as a mere interpreter he would not have achieved such high honour from the emperor, unless he had betrayed the cause of the Persians.” But some say that Isdigousnas slandered him, asserting that he had conversed secretly with the Romans. Now when this ambassador met the emperor for the first time, he spoke no word either small or great about peace, but he made the charge that the Romans had violated the truce, alleging that Arethas and the Saracens, who were allies of the Romans, had outraged Alamundarus in time of peace, and advancing other charges of no consequence which it has seemed to me not at all necessary to mention.
While these negotiations were going on in Byzantium, Bessas with the whole Roman army was entering upon the siege of Petra. First the Romans dug a trench along the wall just where Dagisthaeus had made his ditch when he pulled the wall down there. Now the reason why they dug in the same place I shall explain. Those who built this city originally placed the foundations of the circuit-wall for the most part upon rock, but here and there they were allowed to rest upon earth. And there was such a portion of the wall on the west side of the city of no great extent, on either side of which they had constructed the foundations of the circuit wall upon hard, unyielding rock. This was the portion which Dagisthaeus on the previous occasion and now Bessas likewise undermined, the character of the ground not permitting them to go further, but quite naturally determining the length of the trench for them and controlling it naturally.
Consequently when the Persians, after the withdrawal of Dagisthaeus, wished to build up this part of the wall which had fallen down, they did not follow the previous plan in its construction, but did as follows. Filling the excavated space with gravel, they laid upon it heavy timbers which they had planed very thoroughly, making them entirely smooth, and then they bound them together so as to cover a wide space; these then they used as a base instead of foundation stones, and upon them they skilfully carried out the construction of the circuit-wall. This was not understood by the Romans and they thought they were making their ditch under the foundations. But by excavating the entire space under the timbers which I have just mentioned and carrying their work across most of the ground they did succeed in damaging the wall seriously, and a portion of it had actually dropped down suddenly, but nevertheless this fallen part did not incline at all to either side nor was one of the courses of stone deranged, but the whole section descended intact in a direct line, as if let down by a machine, into the excavated space and stopped there, keeping its proper position, though not with the same height as before, but somewhat less. So when the whole space under the timbers had been excavated, it came about that they settled into it with the entire wall on them.
But even so the wall did not become accessible to the Romans. For when Mermeroes had come there with his great throng of Persians, they had added a great deal to the earlier masonry and so built the circuit-wall exceedingly high. So the Romans, when they saw the part of the wall which had been shaken down still standing, were at a loss and found themselves involved in great perplexity. For neither could they mine any longer, seeing their digging had brought such a result, nor were they able at all to employ the ram, for they were fighting against a wall on a slope, and this engine cannot be brought up to a wall except on smooth and very flat ground.
Now by some chance it so fell out that there were in this Roman army a small number of the barbarians called Sabiri, for the following reason. The Sabiri are a Hunnic nation and live in the region of the Caucasus, being a very numerous people and properly divided among many different rulers. And some of the rulers from ancient times have had relations with the Roman emperor, and others with the king of Persia. And each of these two sovereigns was accustomed to pay a fixed amount of gold to those in alliance with him, not annually, however, but only as need impelled him to do so. At that time, accordingly, the Emperor Justinian, by way of inviting those of the Sabiri who were friendly to him to a fighting alliance, had sent a man who was to convey the money to them. But this man, seeing that, with enemies between, he could in no wise travel in safety into the Caucasus region, particularly when carrying money, went only as far as Bessas and the Roman army that was engaged in besieging Petra, and from there he sent to the Sabiri, bidding some of them who were to receive the money to come to him with all speed; whereupon the Sabiri selected three of their leading men and straightway sent them with a small escort into Lazica. These, then, were the men who, upon arriving there, had entered into the attack on the wall with the Roman army.
Now when these Sabiri saw that the Romans were in despair and at a loss how to handle the situation, they devised a contrivance, such as had never been conceived by anyone else of the Romans or of the Persians since men have existed, although there have always been and now are great numbers of engineers in both countries. And though both nations have often been in need of this device throughout their history, in storming the walls of fortresses situated on any rough and difficult ground, yet not to a single one of them has come this idea which now occurred to these barbarians. Thus as time goes on human ingenuity is ever wont to keep pace with it by discovering new devices. For these Sabiri improvised a ram, not in the customary form, but using a new method which was their innovation. They did not put any beams into this engine, either upright or transverse, but they bound together some rather thick wands and fitted them in place everywhere instead of the beams; then they covered the entire engine with hides and so kept the shape of a ram, and hung a single beam by loose chains, as is customary, in the centre of the engine, and the head of this, having been made sharp and covered over with iron like the barb of a missile, was intended to deal repeated blows to the circuit-wall. And they made the engine so light that it was no longer necessary that it be dragged or pushed along by the men inside, but forty men, who were also destined to draw back the beam and thrust it forward agains
t the wall, being inside the engine and concealed by the hides, could carry the ram upon their shoulders with no difficulty.
These barbarians made three such engines, taking the beams with their iron heads from the rams which the Romans had in readiness but were unable to draw up to the wall. And Roman soldiers chosen for their valour in groups of not less than forty went inside each one of them and set them down very close to the wall. And others were standing on either side of each engine, armed with the corselet and having their heads carefully covered by helmets and carrying poles, the ends of which were fitted with hook-shaped irons; now the purpose for which these had been provided was this, that as soon as the impact of the ram on the wall should break up the courses of the stones, they might be able with these poles to loosen and pull down such stones as were dislodged. So the Romans set to work and the wall was already being shaken by frequent blows, while those who were on both sides of the engines, using their hooked poles, were pulling down the stones as they were dislodged from their setting in the masonry, and it seemed certain that the city would be captured instantly.
Delphi Complete Works of Procopius Page 82