Chap, xlii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 399 work perhaps of a marvellous fable, affords a faint image of the wealth extracted from a virgin earth by the power and industry of ancient kings. Their silver palaces and golden chambers surpass our belief ; but the fame of their riches is said to have excited the enterprising avarice of the Argonauts. 78 Tradition has affirmed, with some colour of reason, that Egypt planted on the Phasis a learned and polite colony, 79 which manufactured linen, built navies, and invented geographical maps. The ingenuity of the moderns has peopled, with flourishing cities and nations, the isthmus between the Euxine and the Caspian ; 80 and a lively writer, observing the resemblance of climate, and, in his apprehension, of trade, has not hesitated to pronounce Colchos the Holland of antiquity. 81 But the riches of Colchos shine only through the darkness Manners of of conjecture or tradition ; and its genuine history presents an uniform scene of rudeness and poverty. If one hundred and thirty languages were spoken in the market of Dioscurias, 82 they were the imperfect idioms of so many savage tribes or families, sequestered from each other in the valleys of mount Caucasus ; 83 and their separation, which diminished the impor- tance, must have multiplied the number, of their rustic capitals. In the present state of Mingrelia, a village is an assemblage of huts within a wooden fence ; the fortresses are seated in the depth of forests ; the princely town of Cyta, or Cotatis, consists [on the of two hundred houses, and a stone edifice appertains only to the magnificence of kings. Twelve ships from Constantinople and about sixty barks, laden with the fruits of industry, annually cast anchor on the coast ; and the list of Colchian exports is 78 Pliny, Hist. Natur. 1. xxxiii. 15. The gold and silver mines of Colchos attracted the Argonauts (Strab. 1. i. p. 77). The sagacious Chardin could find no gold in mines, rivers, or elsewhere. Yet a Mingrelian lost his hand and foot for shewing some specimens at Constantinople of native gold. ™ Herodot. 1. ii. c. 104, 105, p. 150, 151. Diodor. Sicul. 1. i. p. 33, edit. Wesseling. Dionys. Perieget. 689, and Eustath. ad loc. Scholiast, ad Apollonium Argonaut. 1. iv. 282-291. 80 Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, 1. xxi. c. 6, L'Isthme . . . couvert de villes et nations qui ne sont plus. 81 Bougainville, Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, torn. xxvi. p. 33, on the African voyage of Hanno and the commerce of antiquity. 82 A Greek historian, Timosthenes, had affirmed, in earn ccc nationes dissimilibus Unguis descendere ; and the modest Pliny is content to add, et a postea a nostris cxxx interpretibus negotia ibi gesta (vi. 5) ; but the word nunc deserta covers a multitude of past fictions. 83 [On the Caucasian languages, see a paper by R. N. Cust, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xvii. (1885).]
