XXV.

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 λopos 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. (11. 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 eis oikov årɩov, 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

that such an hypothesis could not be determined by an appeal to facts, and very properly declined supporting it from a mere spirit of system. The results derived from considering the whole of the marches in Babylonia, are, that the Greeks advanced from the wall of Media towards Babylon 68 geographical miles, and that they traversed, on their return to the same wall by a proximate calculation, 78 geographical miles, the excess being entailed by leaving the river to reach the first villages, and their next movement to the second villages with the Persian guides.

Εντεῦθεν δ ̓ ἐπορεύθησαν σταθμοὺς δύο, παρασάγγας ὀκτώ· καὶ διέβησαν διώρυχας δύο, τὴν μὲν, ἐπὶ γεφύρας, τὴν δ ̓ ἐζευγμένην πλοίοις ἑπτά (11. 4. § 13). These canals are described as being "derived from the Tigris, and from them ditches were cut that ran into the country, at first broad, then narrower, and ending at last in small water-courses, such as are used in Greece to water panic." Xenophon by repeating the fact here, lends additional weight to his prior statement, that in his time the northerly part of the plain of Babylonia was watered from the Tigris. The system of canals and internal irrigation appears indeed to have been perpetually fluctuating, as in the time of the Khalifat we see 'Akbará described as situated upon the Tigris, the ruins of which are now found upon the dry bed of a canal (Shát Eidhá) at some distance from that river; and as in modern times, to avert the inundations produced by the Euphrates, pouring its floods by the Sakláwiyah into the Tigris, the waters of the Kór3, or marsh of 'Aker Kúf, are carried away by the Dáúdhíyéh canal into that river below the city of Baghdad. There is no doubt that the waters of the Tigris could in the present day be carried, but for the Saklawiyah, into the Euphrates, by a canal drawn in a south-westerly direction, across the northern parts of Babylonia, as they do naturally, by the Shát el Hie, in the southern parts, to the present day. The number of canals drawn from the Tigris, and flowing back to the parent-stream above Sitace, is still considerable, and comprises the Nahr Dijeil, "little Tigris," the Shát Eïdhá, the Ishaki and others. Beyond these canals the Greeks came to the river Tigris, πρὸς ᾧ πόλις ἦν μεγάλη καὶ πολυάνθρωπος, ἡ ὄνομα Σιτάκη, ἀπέχουσα τοῦ ποταμοῦ σταδίους πεντεκαίδεκα. The point at which the army would have approached the Tigris, so as to have been 25 miles from it, (24 to Sitace, 1 to the Tigris), at the western extremity of the Median wall, would have been in a due easterly line, and have occurred at the modern Sherr'at-el

* Kór or Kúr, a marshy lake; Khór is a saline marsh or inlet of the sea.

Beidha, "white river." The ruins at that place are very extensive, consisting of mounds and embankments, and the dry ditch of a canal, and extend northwards some miles, and westwards almost to the colossal ruin of 'Aker Kúf, from which, however, they are separated during a great part of the year by inundations from the Euphrates. The traces of a bridge on the Tigris opposite to this point are also distinctly visible, as I had an opportunity of assuring myself during an ascent of the river in the steamer Euphrates.

The Greeks encamped close to the town of Sitace, “near a large and beautiful park, covered with trees of every kind," and the Persians on the other side of the Tigris, but out of sight of the Greeks. "The next morning by break of day they passed the bridge, which was supported by 37 pontoons." The number of boats or pontoons by which the bridge at Baghdad is supported varies at different seasons; hence it is that Balbi counted 37, in 1579; Texiera 28, in 1605; Della Valle 29, in 1616; Thevenot 40, in 1664; Ives 39, in 1758; and Niebuhr 34, in 1766.

From the Tigris the Greeks επορεύθησαν σταθμούς τέτταρας, παρασάγγας εἴκοσιν, ἐπὶ τὸν Φύσκον ποταμὸν, τὸ εὖρος πλέθρου· ἐπῆν δὲ γέφυρα. Καὶ ἐνταῦθα ᾠκειτο πόλις μεγάλη, ᾗ ὄνομα 'Ωπις (11. 4, § 25). Mr. Ross and others have lately sought for the ruins of Opis, amid an extensive series of mounds and fragments which exist at the actual junction of the "Adhem or Physcus with the Tigris, but some doubt still exists upon this otherwise satisfactory identification. In the time of the Khalifat, Abú'l Fadá describes two great canals as derived from the Tigris above the "Adhem, one to the east, called Nahr-wán, the other to the west called Dijeïl, and these had dependent upon them a considerable district of towns, villages, and cultivated lands. Between the Dijeil and the actual Tigris are also evidences of the old bed of the river now called the Shát Eidhá. The ruins of 'Akbará, described by Abú'l Fadá as being on the Tigris, are, as handed down by name and tradition, upon this ancient bed of the Tigris; and if therefore this was the bed of the river, in the time of the Khalifat, it is equally likely that it was also so in

3 In June 1836, I found the bridge to be 253 paces across, and supported by 35 boats.

4" "Adhem or "Azem, "the largest river," says Mr. Renouard, is an epithet, rather

than a name. The in Arabic, is sounded like th in thou, in Persian like a commonj. Hence it is, in reality, the Athem of the Arabs, and Azem of the Persians.