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that, even should Orestes escape the fangs of the three Furies principally interested in his pursuit, there are others prepared to pounce upon him even in hell itself; those other Furies, namely, to whom Euripides alludes in the above passage of the Iphigenia, . as still pursuing their victim after the rest had been appeased.

The part at which the three principal Furies joined themselves to the remainder of the chorus was probably at the beginning of the μvos déσmos v. 307 seqq. This seems to have been the first στάσιμον and the words ἄγε δὴ καὶ χορὸν ἅψωμεν appear to point out that a regular chorus was now for the first time in the course of formation. The choral strains, too, are here preceded by a system of anapasts; a method of introducing his chorus generally adopted by Eschylus. They are used in four out of the six remaining plays besides the present one. And in one of the other two, the Prometheus, anapæsts are not used because the chorus of Oceanides make their first appearance in an aerial chariot. But no sooner do they, at the request of Prometheus, alight upon terra firma and proceed to take their station in the orchestra, than the anapastic metre is adopted.

It now only remains to point out a few of the advantages resulting from the above arrangement. First, then, the dignity of tragedy is maintained by assigning a full complement to its chorus. Secondly, the difficulties encountered in two or three passages of the play which allude to three Furies, are obviated by the supposition that they refer to those three who take a principal part in the action. Thirdly, Müller's unauthorized notion that the ропоμпоι, who escort the Eumenides to their subterraneous dwelling, consisted of the unemployed members of a chorus of forty-eight or fifty which he supposes to have been assigned to the tragic poet, is rendered unnecessary; since the bulk of the chorus might have left the orchestra after the second stasimon, and again reappearing as the escort of the three principal Furies, have sung the closing ode.

THOMAS DYER.

P. S. The above paper had been written some months, and was already in type, when the writer of it had an opportunity of seeing Professor Scholefield's edition of the Eumenides, published about the middle of the current month. The writer was happy to find some part of his views respecting the constitution of the chorus confirmed by such authority. Hermann had, indeed, hinted that

there were three principal Furies to which the rest were subordinate; but seemed in some measure to repudiate that view by the manner in which he interpreted the Scholium cited in page 294—τοῦτο οὐ πρὸς τὰς τρεῖς ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν χορόν ;—the version of which given in the above paper coincides with that of Professor Scholefield. The last-named learned editor seems to agree with the German critics as to the manner in which the first choral ode was sung. But, besides the objections urged above, it is difficult to see how it could have been anti-strophic if the choreutæ entered the orchestra one after the other. With respect to the ode beginning at v. 876, the method which Professor Scholefield seems to adopt (Pref. p. ix.), namely, that it was sung by three only whilst the rest remained mute, would certainly have been awkward. On the other hand, the absurdity of assigning it to more than three appears insurmountable. The only way of obviating this (if a chorus of more than three be admitted) seems to be the one suggested in the preceding article: that is, by making the twelve subsidiary choreutæ leave the orchestra after the second stasimon ending at v. 535, and reappear as the ярожоμяоí. That the chorus should leave the orchestra before the end of the play was sometimes allowed in the Greek theatre; and indeed they must have done so between the first and second odes of the present play.

T. D.

London, 31st Oct. 1843.

A MEMOIR ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE ANABASIS OF XENOPHON.

PART II.

AFTER the death of Cyrus, the Greeks having on their side successfully resisted the enemy, followed them, on their retiring, to a village, where they halted, "for there was an eminence above the village, upon which the king's forces faced about” (vπèp yàp τῆς κώμης γήλοφος ἦν ἐφ ̓ οὗ ἀνεστράφησαν οἱ ἀμφὶ βασιλέα 1. 10. § 12). This has been considered as affording evidence of the battle of Cunaxa having taken place north of the Median wall, as there are no hills strictly speaking on the plains of Babylonia. (Baillie Fraser, Mesopotamia and Assyria, p. 186.) But the etymology of the word yλopos used by the historian to express the eminence in question, leaves no doubt that one of the earthen hills or mounds, so common throughout Babylonia and Chaldea, was meant. The king's troops having retreated from this eminence, the Greeks returned to their camp, which they found had been plundered during their absence. The night following this the Greeks marched under Clearchus to join Ariæus, who had retired the day of the battle, with the rest of the Barbarians, to the camp they had left the day before. For this march a retrograde distance of four parasangs or twelve geographical miles may be allowed. Sacrifices and a compact of friendship were made on this occasion, and Ariæus proposed to return by a different route. The next march was commenced by day-break, having the sun on the right, or marching northwards, and in the evening, after being alarmed by the appearance of sumpter-horses at pasture, they arrived at some villages. For this march, being from morning to evening, a distance of five parasangs or fifteen miles may be allowed. The next day an interview took place with the enemy, a truce was concluded, and guides were provided to lead the Greeks where there were provisions. The direction of the next march as guided by the Persians, or its relation to the sun, is not given; but it is stated that the army met with ditches and canals full of water, Καὶ ἐνετύγχανον τάφροις καὶ αὐλῶσι πλήρεσιν ὕδατος, (11. 3. § 10), so that they were not able to pass without bridges, which they made of palm-trees. There is every reason to believe,

from this statement, that the Greeks were led into the interior of Babylonia, and Clearchus appears justly to have suspected that the ditches had been filled with water purposely, as it was not the season for irrigating the land. Five parasangs or fifteen miles may also be allowed for the extent of this day's march. The Greeks stayed upwards of twenty days at these villages, when Tissaphernes having promised to conduct them, in friendship, out of the country, after three days march, ἀφίκοντο πρὸς τὸ Μηδίας τειχος, καὶ παρῆλθον αὐτοῦ εἴσω· ἦν δὲ ᾠκοδομημένον πλίνθοις ὀπτᾶις ἐν ἀσφάλτῳ κειμέναις, εὖρος εἴκοσι ποδῶν, ὕψος δὲ ἑκατόν· μῆκος δὲ ἐλέγετο εἶναι εἴκοσι παρασαγγών. (II. 4. § 12.) Xenophon appears to include here the length of the trench carried from the Royal River to the wall, in the length of the latter, for we learn from Strabo that this wall, which he calls the wall of Semiramis, had its origin in the neighbourhood of Opis, and if prolonged from thence in a south-westerly direction to the distance of 60 miles as given by Xenophon, it would have extended as far as to the banks of the Nahr Melik, or Royal River, and be as described ἀπειχε δὲ Βαβυλῶνος οὐ πολύ; but Julian, who advanced into Babylonia from the same quarter as Cyrus, (only that, like Trajan and Severus, he crossed the country by the Royal River, after the capture of Perisabor;) notices the wall as being at the head of the plain, above where the canals were given off from the river, and somewhere near the site of the Macepracta of his historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, and the Sipphara of Ptolemy. The traces of this wall under the name of Khalú or Sidd Nimrúd', appear to have been first discovered in modern times by Mr. Ross, surgeon to the residency at Baghdad. It was afterwards visited by the officers of the Euphrates' expedition, and has since been more carefully examined by Captain Lynch and his party. The ruins indicate a construction similar to what is described by Xenophon. It is wide enough for two persons to ride abreast, and is still in many places 30 feet in height. It has not been traced beyond the ruins of Sipphara, now called Sifeirah. This indeed appears to be the position that would have been chosen for such a wall, extending from the Tigris above Opis, where the eastern bank of that river was defended by the city and the river Physcus, to near the point where, as Ptolemy and Ammianus describe it, the first great canal is cut from

1 Wall or embankment of Nimrod, also according to Captain Lynch called Motbakh, and sometimes Shistát.

the Euphrates. In following such a direction it also marks the line of limitation of the alluvial plain of Babylonia, from where it is succeeded to the north by low, hilly, infertile, and rocky districts. Under all these circumstances, and after mature consideration on the spot, and subsequently at home, of the distances travelled over by the Greeks on the plain of Babylonia, after the engagement, of the wilful detention practised upon them, and their ultimate betrayal by their inimical hosts, the opinion has been forced upon me, that they were purposely misled here, as they also subsequently were in Armenia, and that the going through the Median wall at all, as well as the erroneous extent given to it by Xenophon, was only a part of the mystification practised upon himself, and the remainder of the Greeks. We are obliged to believe, from the necessities of the case, that Tissaphernes having arrived with his army and the guides, marched, as Xenophon expresses it, as els oikov ảnɩòv, that he led the Greeks three days' march, or about 36 geographical miles, by Sifeïrah, at which point he turned round, and conducted them through the wall into Sitacene, thus leaving them in perplexity with regard to the relations of that rich and fertile province to the city of Babylon. This view of the subject, as we shall afterwards see, is supported by the subsequent facts, and it clears up the difficulties presented by the distances given in the marches from Cunaxa to the wall, and from the wall to Sitace. Puzzled by such peculiarities in the movements of the Greeks, D'Anville, in a map sketched for Rollin's History, brought a second wall in a curve from the centre of the Median wall, and led it to the Euphrates near Babylon. Delisle also delineates a wall passing by 'Aker Kuf (Accad) to the vicinity of Babylon-an unnecessary distance; for as we have previously seen, according to Xenophon, its extent was only 60 miles, which would not carry it beyond the Royal River, and supposing that this arrangement did exist in antiquity, and for which I can see no adequate reason, (for what ostensible purpose would a wall be constructed, traversing the plain of Babylonia lengthwise?) even then the Greeks must have been led about in a most irregular manner, previous to reaching the wall, and again on the other side, for they travelled from it to Sitace, 24 miles, Sitace being 60 miles from Opis, at the head of the same wall, which was itself only 60 miles in extent. Dr. Vincent, in his able work on the Commerce of the Ancients, at first supported the presumed existence of two walls, but in his Dissertation on Opis, in the Appendix to the same work, he allowed

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