to an express limitation of its range--the settled provinces of
both empires should be protected by it, but Lazica and the country of
the Saracens should be excluded from its operation. Justinian consented
to these terms, despite the opposition of many of his subjects, who
thought that Rome degraded herself by her repeated payments of money
to Persia, and accepted a position little better than that of a Persian
tributary.

Thus the peace of A.D. 551 did nothing towards ending the Lazic war,
which, after languishing through the whole of A.D. burst out again with
renewed vigor in the spring of A.D. 553. Mermeroes in that year advanced
from Kutais against Telephis, a strong fort in the possession of Rome,
expelled the commandant, Martinus, by a stratagem, pressed forward
against the combined Roman forces, which fled before him from Ollaria,
and finally drove them to the coast and cooped them up in "the Island,"
a small tract near the mouth of the Phasis between that stream and the
Doconus. On his return he was able to reinforce a garrison which he had
established at Onoguris in the immediate neighborhood of Archseopolis,
as a means of annoying and weakening that important station. He may
naturally have hoped in one or two more campaigns to have driven the
last Roman out of the country and to have attached Lazica permanently
to the empire of the great king.

Unluckily, however, for Persia, the fatigues which the gallant veteran
had undergone in the campaign of A.D. 553 proved more than his aged
frame could endure, and he had scarcely reached Kutais when he was
seized with a fatal malady, to which he succumbed in the course of the
winter. Chosroes appointed as his successor a certain Nachoragan, who
is said to have been a general of repute, but who proved himself quite
unequal to the position which he was called upon to fill, and in the
course of two years ruined the Persian cause in Lazica. The failure
was the more signal from the fact that exactly at the time of his
appointment circumstances occurred which seriously shook the Roman
influence over the Lazi, and opened a prospect to Persia transcending
aught that she could reasonably have hoped. This was nothing less than
a most serious quarrel between Gubazes, the Lazic king, and some of the
principal Roman commanders--a quarrel which involved consequences fatal
to both parties. Gubazes, disgusted with the negligence or incapacity
of the Roman chiefs, had made complaint of