p. 160; Rasche, Lex. Num. s. v.; Eckhel, vol. i. pp. 50, 51; Ukert, vol. ii. pt. 1. pp. 416, 417; Ford, Handbook of Spain, p. 210.) [[ P. S. ]
The surface of the country is greatly diversified with mountains, hills, plains, and valleys; the best portion of this rich province is the basin of the Kûr, with the valleys of the Aragavi, Alazan, and other tributary streams. Strabo (p. 499) speaks of the numerous cities of Iberia, with their houses having tiled roofs, as well as some architectural pretensions. Besides this, they had market-places and other public buildings. The people of the Iberes or Iberi (Ἴβηρες, Steph. B. s. v.) were somewhat more civilised than their neighbours in Colchis. According to Strabo (p. 500), they were divided into four castes:— (1.) The royal horde, from which the chiefs, both in peace and war, were taken. (2.) The priests, who acted also as arbitrators in their quarrels with the neighbouring tribes. (3.) Soldiers and husbandmen. (4.) The mass of the population, who were slaves to the king. The form of government was patriarchal. The people of the plain were peaceful, |
Under the reign of Constantine the Iberians were converted by a captive woman to Christianity, which has been preserved there, though mixed with superstition, down to the present times. One of the original sources for this story, which will be found in Neander (Allgemein Gesch. der Christl. Relig. vol. iii. pp. 234—236; comp. Milman, Hist. of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 480), is Rufinus (x. 10), from whom the Greek church historians (Socrat. i. 20; Sozom. ii. 7; Theod. i. 24; Mos. Choren. ii. 83) have borrowed it. In A. D. 365—378, by the ignominious treaty of Jovian, the Romans renounced the sovereignty and alliance of Armenia and Iberia. Sapor, after subjugating Armenia, marched against Samromaces, who was king of Iberia by the permission of the emperors, and, after expelling him, reduced Iberia to the state of a Persian province. (Amm. Marc. xxvii. 12; Gibbon, c. xxv; Le Beau, Bas Empire, vol. iii. p. 357.) During the wars between the Roman emperors and the Sassanian princes, the Iberian Gates had come into the possession of a prince of the Huns, who offered this important pass to Anastasius; but when the emperor built Darus, with the object of keeping the Persians in check, Cobades, or Kobâd, seized upon the defiles of the Caucasus, and fortified them, though less as a precaution against the Romans than against the Huns and other northern barbarians. (Procop. B. P. i. 10; Gibbon, c. xl.; Le Beau, vol. vi. pp. 269, 442, vol. vii. p. 398.) For a curious history of this pass, and its identification with the fabled wall of Gog and Magog, see Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. ii. pp. 93—104; Eichwald, Peripl. des Casp. Meeres, vol. i. pp. 128—132. On the decline of the Persian power, the Iberian frontier was the scene of the operations of the emperors Maurice and Heraclius. Iberia is now a province of Russia. The Georgians, who do not belong to the Indo-European family of nations, are the same race as the ancient Iberians. By the Armenian writers they are still called Virk, a name of perhaps the same original as Ἴβηρες. They call themselves Kartli, and derive their origin, according to their national traditions, from an eponymous ancestor, Kartlos. Like the Armenians, with whom however, there is |
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