Accordingly, a little later, when Justinus was ruling over the Romans, the place was visited by an exceedingly violent earthquake, which shook down the whole city and straightway brought to the ground the most and the finest of the buildings, and it is said that at that time three hundred thousand of the population of Antioch perished.  And finally in this capture the whole city, as has been said, was destroyed.  Such, then, was the calamity which befell the men of Antioch.

And Belisarius came to Byzantium from Italy, summoned by the emperor; and after he had spent the winter in Byzantium, the emperor sent him as general against Chosroes and the Persians at the opening of spring, together with the officers who had come with him from Italy, one of whom, Valerianus, he commanded to lead the troops in Armenia. [541 A.D.] For Martinus had been sent immediately to the East, and for this reason Chosroes found him at Daras, as has been stated above.  And among the Goths, Vittigis remained in Byzantium, but all the rest marched with Belisarius against Chosroes.  At that time one of the envoys of Vittigis, he who was assuming the name of bishop, died in the land of Persia, and the other one remained there.  And the man who followed them as interpreter withdrew to the land of the Romans, and John, who was commanding the troops in Mesopotamia, arrested him near the boundaries of Constantina, and bringing him into the city confined him in a prison; there the man in answer to his enquiries related everything which had been done.  Such, then, was the course of these events.  And Belisarius and his followers went in haste, since he was eager to anticipate Chosroes’ making any second invasion into the land of the Romans.

XV

But in the meantime Chosroes was leading his army against Colchis, where the Lazi were calling him in for the following reason.  The Lazi at first dwelt in the land of Colchis as subjects of the Romans, but not to the extent of paying them tribute or obeying their commands in any respect, except that, whenever their king died, the Roman emperor would send emblems of the office to him who was about to succeed to the throne.  And he, together with his subjects, guarded strictly the boundaries of the land in order that hostile Huns might not proceed from the Caucasus mountains, which adjoin their territory, through Lazica and invade the land of the Romans.  And they kept guard without receiving money or troops from the Romans and without ever joining the Roman armies, but they were always engaged in commerce by sea with the Romans who live on the Black Sea.  For they themselves have neither salt nor grain nor any other good thing, but by furnishing skins and hides and slaves they secured the supplies which they needed.  But when the events came to pass in which Gourgenes, the king of the Iberians, was concerned, as has been told in the preceding narrative[13], Roman soldiers began to be quartered among the Lazi;