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Then Aietes' race rushed up like a whirlwind, and his eyes flashed fire as he heard; but he crushed his anger down in his breast, and spoke mildly a cunning speech 'If you will fight for the fleece with my Colchians, then many a man must die. But do you indeed expect to win from me the fleece in fight? So few you are that if you be worsted I can load your ship with your corpses.
But when the Colchians learnt the death of their prince, verily they were eager to pursue Argo and the Minyans through all the Cronian sea. But Hera restrained them by terrible lightnings from the sky. And at last they loathed their own homes in the Cytaean land, quailing before Aeetes' fierce wrath; so they landed and made abiding homes there, scattered far and wide.
On the other side of the Sapeirian country, in the tracts now known as Mingrelia and Imeritia, regions of a wonderful beauty and fertility, were the Colchians dependants, but not exactly subjects, of Persia.
Then the Colchians knew that they might not make war upon the heroes. They drew off. The next day they marched away. It was a rich land that they had come to. Once Aristaeus dwelt there, the king who discovered how to make bees store up their honey for men and how to make the good olive grow.
In the assembly place, with his son Apsyrtus beside him, and with the furious Colchians all around him, the king stood: on his breast was the gleaming corselet that Ares had given him, and on his head was that golden helmet with its four plumes that made him look as if he were truly the son of Helios, the Sun.
Be witness that mighty oath of the Colchians by which thou urgest me to swear, the great Heaven, and Earth beneath, mother of the gods, that as far as strength lies in me, never shalt thou fail of help, if only thy prayers can be accomplished."
Of late, and not far away, Echetus in wanton cruelty thrust spikes of bronze in his daughter's eyes; and by a grievous fate is she wasting away, grinding grains of bronze in a dungeon's gloom." Thus she spake, beseeching; and by his wife's words his heart was softened, and thus he spake: "Arete, with arms I could drive forth the Colchians, showing grace to the heroes for the maiden's sake.
His words are these: "The only people who were circumcised in their privy members originally, were the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians; but the Phoenicians and those Syrians that are in Palestine confess that they learned it from the Egyptians.
The latter had since the peace busied himself in strengthening anew his rule, which was shaken even in the northern provinces; he had pacified the Colchians by appointing his able son Mithradates as their governor; he had then made away with that son, and was now preparing for an expedition into his Bosporan kingdom.
The common interest of both empires imposed on the Colchians the duty of guarding the passes of Mount Caucasus, where a wall of sixty miles is now defended by the monthly service of the musketeers of Mingrelia. But this honorable connection was soon corrupted by the avarice and ambition of the Romans.
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