an expedition; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the army
furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit
of the king and arranging its return. The fleet received instructions
to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia
Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade
the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader
who should break the blockade. Pompeius conducted the land troops
not without great hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory
to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream,
into the Albanian plain.

Fresh Conflicts with the Albanians

For several days the Roman army had to march in the glowing heat
through this almost waterless flat country, without encountering
the enemy; it was only on the left bank of the Abas (probably
the river elsewhere named Alazonius, now Alasan) that the force
of the Albanians under the leadership of Coses, brother of the king
Oroizes, was drawn up against the Romans; they are said to have
amounted, including the contingent which had arrived
from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry
and 12,000 cavalry. Yet they would hardly have risked the battle,
unless they had supposed that they had merely to fight with
the Roman cavalry; but the cavalry had only been placed in front,
and, on its retiring, the masses of Roman infantry showed themselves
from their concealment behind. After a short conflict the army
of the barbarians was driven into the woods, which Pompeius
gave orders to invest and set on fire. The Albanians thereupon
consented to make peace; and, following the example of the more
powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and the Caspian
concluded a treaty with the Roman general. The Albanians,
Iberians, and generally the peoples settled to the south along,
and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus entered at least for the moment
into a relation of dependence on Rome. When, on the other hand,
the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis--Colchians, Soani,
Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae--were inscribed
in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion
of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact.
The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history
of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic,
found its limit there.

Mithradates Goes to Pan