The Lazic War (541–562)

The Lazic War was a twenty-year struggle between the Sasanian Empire and Byzantium, from 541 to 562 CE, for control of Lazica, a small Christian kingdom on the eastern shore of the Black Sea in what is now western Georgia. Khosrow I entered it at the invitation of its king and took the Roman fortress of Petra, hoping for a foothold on the Black Sea. The Lazi changed sides again, and after years of sieges and forest battles Persia gave up its claim in the Fifty Years’ Peace of 562.

A kingdom between two empires

Lazica was the old land of Colchis, the country of the Golden Fleece in Greek myth: a wet, forested coastal plain around the river Phasis (the modern Rioni), with mountains behind. It produced little that empires wanted except timber and slaves, but it mattered for its position. Whoever held it controlled one route from the steppe into Asia Minor and, more important, a stretch of the Black Sea coast. To the east lay Iberia (Kartli), already under firm Persian control.

The Lazic kings had been Roman clients since the 520s, when King Tzath I was baptised and crowned in Constantinople. In the 530s Justinian tightened his grip. His commander John Tzibus built a fortress at Petra on the coast and set up a trade monopoly there, so that the Lazi had to buy salt and other goods from Roman officials at high prices. Lazic resentment gave Khosrow his opening.

Khosrow takes Petra, 541

In 541, the year after his sack of Antioch, Khosrow answered an appeal from the Lazic king Gubazes II and led an army over the mountains from Iberia. Petra was besieged and taken; John Tzibus died in the fighting. Lazica became a Persian protectorate.

Procopius, who wrote while the war was still being fought, explains what Persia hoped to gain. With Lazica in Persian hands, he says, Khosrow could build ships from the Lazic forests and send a fleet across the Black Sea to threaten Constantinople, and he could open a route for the steppe peoples against the Roman provinces. Modern historians doubt that a Persian navy on the Black Sea was ever a practical plan, but Roman writers clearly feared it.

The Lazi change sides, 548

Persian rule proved no easier than Roman. Lazica was Christian, and Procopius reports that Zoroastrian priests were active there and that Khosrow intended to remove the Lazi from their country and settle Persians in their place. He also says Khosrow sent an officer named Phabrizus to have Gubazes murdered. Whether or not every detail is true, Gubazes believed his throne and his faith were in danger. In 548 he turned back to Justinian, who sent an army of about 8,000 men under Dagisthaeus.

The sieges of Petra

Dagisthaeus besieged Petra, whose Persian garrison held out until a relief army under Mihr-Mihroe (Greek Mermeroes), Khosrow’s most capable general in the Caucasus, broke through the passes. In 549 the Romans and Lazi destroyed a Persian supply column near the Phasis and defeated another Persian army at the river Hippis, where its commander Chorianes was killed. Petra was resupplied all the same. It finally fell in 551 to the veteran general Bessas, who stormed it after a long siege and had the walls pulled down so that it could never again serve as a Persian base.

A war of forts and forests

With Petra lost, the Persians fought for the interior. In 551 Mihr-Mihroe failed to take the Lazic stronghold of Archaeopolis (modern Nokalakevi) but captured Kutaisi (Cotais) and the fort of Uthimereos, which gave him the eastern part of the country and the mountain districts beyond. Agathias, who continued Procopius’ history, describes a war of ambushes, river crossings and wooden forts in dense woodland, fought by Persian cavalry and infantry, Roman troops, Lazic levies and allies from the Caucasus, among them the Sabirs and Alans.

In 555 Mihr-Mihroe used a feigned retreat to rout a larger Roman and Lazic army at Telephis. He died of illness soon after and was replaced by Nachoragan.

The murder of Gubazes

The worst blow to the Roman side came from its own commanders. Gubazes had quarrelled with the Roman generals and written to Justinian blaming them for the defeats. The generals Martin and Rusticus, with Rusticus’ brother John, decided to get rid of him, and John stabbed the king during a meeting. The Lazi were outraged and for a time refused to fight. Justinian ordered an inquiry, Rusticus and John were tried and executed, and Gubazes’ younger brother Tzath was made king.

The last campaigns and the peace

In 556 Nachoragan attacked the Roman base at Phasis, near the river’s mouth, and was beaten off with heavy losses. Agathias says Khosrow had him flayed alive for his failure. A truce was agreed in 557, and in 561–562 the Roman envoy Peter the Patrician and the Persian official Yazdgushnasp (in Greek, Zikh) negotiated the Fifty Years’ Peace. Persia evacuated Lazica. Rome agreed to pay 30,000 gold coins a year, with the first years paid in advance, a sum Persia could present as Rome’s share of the cost of defending the Caucasus passes. The terms are summarised on the Sasanian–Byzantine wars of the 6th century.

Who won

Neither side achieved what it set out to do. Persia failed to keep a Black Sea outlet, and Rome had to pay to keep a kingdom that had twice rebelled against it. The war showed the limits of Sasanian power in difficult country far from Mesopotamia, and also the strength of the Sasanian army in long campaigns: Mihr-Mihroe, old and lame by the end, held much of the country for years against larger forces. Lazica itself was ruined by two decades of fighting.

The two great narratives of the war, Procopius and Agathias, were written in Constantinople and are critical of Roman generals but give only the outline of Persian aims. For the Persian army that fought there, see the Sasanian army; for the king who directed it, Khosrow I Anushirvan.

1. 541 Khosrow takes Petra; Lazica a Persian protectorate
2. 548 Gubazes turns to Rome; first Roman siege of Petra
3. 549 Persian defeats on the Phasis and the Hippis
4. 551 Bessas takes Petra; Mihr-Mihroe takes Kutaisi
5. 555 Persian victory at Telephis; murder of Gubazes
6. 556 Nachoragan defeated at Phasis
7. 557 Truce
8. 562 Fifty Years’ Peace; Persia leaves Lazica