Kingdom of Iberia in 218 B.C.

Kingdom of Iberia — Spring 218 BC · The Highland Kingdom of the Cyrus.

The Kingdom of Iberia — Kartli, in the eastern highlands of the Caucasus, a native mountain monarchy seated in the broad valley of the Kura, the river the Greeks call the Cyrus. Its people are no Persians and no Greeks but a distinct Caucasian folk, long settled in the river-country between the snows of the great range to the north and the deserts that fall away toward Armenia in the south. Yet the long shadow of the Persian order lies over them still: their kings rule in the manner of the old Achaemenid satraps whose empire once reached these glens, fire and the sun are honoured, and an Iranian aristocracy of horsemen and a learned priesthood stand about the throne. From the twin fortresses of Harmozike and Seusamora, guarding the meeting of the waters near Mtskheta, the monarchy commands the valley roads — and beyond them the dread Gates of the Caucasus, through which the wild peoples of the north would pour if they were not barred. To the west lies Colchis of the golden fleece; to the south, Greater Armenia.

Far from the quarrels of the Hellenistic kings over Coele-Syria and the Aegean, the Iberians keep their own high valley between the snows and the steppe. Theirs is a kingdom of mountain and river: the Kura runs broad and grey through the heart of it, gathering the Aragus and the Alazonios from the glens of the Caucasus, and along its banks lie the fields, the vineyards and the fortress-towns of a settled people. They are not Persians, though the order the Persians left behind still governs much of their life — the rule of a horse-riding nobility, the reverence of fire and the heavenly lights, the satrapal style of their crowned kings. Their strength is the land itself: the twin citadels of Harmozike and Seusamora that lock the river-roads where the waters meet by Mtskheta, and above all the high passes of the great range, the famed Gates of the Caucasus, which the Iberians hold against the numberless tribes of the north. To be lord of those gates is to be the door-keeper between two worlds — and that is what the kings of Kartli are.