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408 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xlii cause and forerunner of a shameful defeat. The Eomans had been gradually repulsed to the edge of the sea-shore ; and their roidPoti] last camp, on the ruins of the Grecian colony of Phasis, was defended on all sides by strong intrenchments, the river, the Euxine, and a fleet of galleys. Despair united their counsels and invigorated their arms ; they withstood the assault of the Persians; and the flight of Nacoragan preceded or followed the slaughter of ten thousand of his bravest soldiers. He escaped from the Eomans to fall into the hands of an unforgiving master, who severely chastised the error of his own choice ; the unfortunate general was flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed into the human form, was exposed on a mountain : a dreadful warn- ing to those who might hereafter be entrusted with the fame and fortune of Persia. 97 Yet the prudence of Chosroes insensibly relinquished the prosecution of the Colchian war, in the just persuasion that it is impossible to reduce or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants. The fidelity of Gubazes sustained the most rigorous trials. He patiently endured the hardships of a savage life, and rejected, with disdain, the specious temptations of the Persian court. The king of the Lazi had been educated in the Christian re- ligion ; his mother was the daughter of a senator ; during his youth, he had served ten years a silentiary of the Byzantine palace, 08 and the arrears of an unpaid salary were a motive of attachment as well as of complaint. But the long continuance of his sufferings extorted from him a naked representation of the truth; and truth was an unpardonable libel on the lieu- tenants of Justinian, who, amidst the delaj^s of a ruinous war, had spared his enemies and trampled on his allies. Their malicious information persuaded the emperor that his faithless vassal already meditated a second defection ; an order was issued to send him prisoner to Constantinople ; a treacherous clause was inserted, that he might be lawfully killed in case of resistance ; and Gubazes, without arms or suspicion of danger, D7 The punishment of flaying alive could not be introduced into Persia by Sapor (Brisson, de Eegn. Pers. 1. ii. p. 578), nor could it be copied from the foolish tale of Marsyas the Phrygian piper, most foolishly quoted as a precedent by Agathias (1. iv. p. 132, 133). 98 In the palace of Constantinople there were thirty silentiaries, who are styled hastati ante fores cubiculi, T7js (riyfjs iiritTT&rat, an honourable title, which conferred the rank, without imposing the duties, of a senator (Cod. Theodos. 1. vi. tit. 23. Gothofred. Comment, torn. ii. p. 129),