existed, no water could have possibly got into its bed, all going into the Nahr Batt and Rathan, and by them into the Nahr Wan." The same applies to the Diyalah, of which the popular belief is that its waters were carried by the Nahr Wan into the Kerkhah and that "the bed of the lower Diyala is of comparatively recent formation." (Chesney, Vol. I. p. 27.)

OPIS.-Herod. I. 189. Xen. Anab. II. iv. 25.

OPIS has long been known as the opprobrium of geography. The historical notices respecting it are neither few nor unimportant, sufficient one might suppose to indicate its position with tolerable precision. Herodotus classes it with Nineveh, as a principal city on the Tigris. According to Xenophon, it stood on the left bank of the Tigris, at the confluence of another river, the Physcus, at a point 50 parasangs distant from the ford across the Zab (see inf. p. 143, note 1).

In Alexander's time Opis was still the principal city on the Tigris; it had a royal palace (Baoíλera Arrian, Anab. VII. vii. 6, 8), and when Alexander sailed up the Tigris from Susa destroying the dykes which impeded the navigation of the river, the work of destruction stopped at Opis,—so far and no farther was the river made navigable. At Opis broke out that general mutiny of his army which only yielded a signal triumph to his personal power, to the unquailing resolution and consummate tact with which he quelled it. Here he placed his disabled veterans in the hands of Cratinus to be conveyed home. The opening of the Tigris navigation does not seem to have added to the importance and prosperity of Opis, for we have no mention of it whatever in the wars, carried on in the neighbourhood, between Alexander's generals after his death. The subsequent foundation of Seleucia on the Tigris as the seat of empire, and great emporium of commerce between East and West, would prove a fatal blow to the prosperity of Opis. Strabo speaks of it as a village and mart for its neighbourhood (Tŵv kúkλw

'Band' was made to throw the water for irrigation into the Nahr Batt on

the right, and the Nahr Rathan on the left." Dr Ross, 1. c. p. 133.

TóπWV),' Strabo XVI. i. 9, and its name does not appear at all in Ptolemy's list of places in Assyria.

The position of Opis is in close connexion with that of Sittake: both were on the Tigris 50 G. miles (20 parasangs) apart. Prof. Rawlinson having placed Sittake on the road between Babylon and Susa places Opis at the mouth of the Diyalah', the Gyndes of Herodotus, finding confirmation of his view in Hdt. I. 189 ἐπεί τε δὲ ὁ Κῦρος πορευόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν Βαβυλῶνα ἐγίνετο ἐπὶ Γύνδῃ ποταμῷ, τοῦ αἱ μὲν πηγαὶ ἐν Ματιηνοῖσι οὔρεσι ῥέει δὲ διὰ Δαρδανέων, ἐκδιδοῖ δὲ ἐς ἕτερον ποταμὸν Τίγριν ὁ δὲ παρὰ Ωπιν ῥέων ἐς τὴν Ἐρυθρὴν θάλασσαν ἐκSido, &c. This passage he renders thus; "Cyrus in his way Babylon came to the banks of the Gyndes, which rising in the Matienian mountains runs through the country of the Dardanians, and empties itself into the Tigris. The Tigris, after receiving the Gyndes, flows on by the city of Opis, &c."

to

There is nothing in the Greek for the words which I have put in italics, and their introduction is objectionable as giving arbitrarily a colour to the passage which Herodotus' words do not warrant. His aim, I believe, is not at all to make any statement about the relative position of Opis and the Gyndes, such as a man might make who had sailed down the Tigris, and knew all about its confluent streams and adjacent cities, of which knowledge in Herodotus' case there is, I believe, no evidence whatever, but simply, as his manner is, to interweave into his narrative any geographical information that fell in his way, with a view here, it may be, of describing a river unknown to most of his readers by naming some principal city on its banks, like Opis, whose character as a great emporium city of Eastern

1 The Diyalah would thus be at once the Physcus of Xenophon (see sup. p. 138) and the Gyndes of Herodotus. That the same river should, within the same half-century, have borne two different names is on the face of it an improbability.

2 Had he meant to give the relative position of the points in question the proper rendering of péwv would be,

'The Tigris as it flows past Opis enters the Red Sea (Persian Gulf);' i. e. Opis would have to be placed at the mouth of the Tigris; and this in fact was Wesseling's view of the passage; he supposing that Opis and Ampe both stood at the mouth of the river, but on opposite banks. See his note on Hdt. vi. 20, given by Schweighauser, ad loc.

commerce might make it well known to some at least of his hearers. In the same cursory way he says a little further on when speaking of the Great Canal of Babylonia (1. 193), éσéxeɩ δὲ ἐς ἄλλον ποταμὸν ἐκ τοῦ Εὐφρήτεω, ἐς τὸν Τίγριν, παρ' ὃν Νίνος πόλις οἴκητο. It will not be maintained that the capital of Assyria was introduced here as having any connexion local or historical with the Babylonian Canal, but simply because, having mentioned Nineveh before (1. 185), it occurs to him here, when speaking of the Tigris, to inform his readers that the city stood upon this river. Geographical information is given by him less as ancillary to narrative, than as a constituent and independent part of his 'Researches.'

After all, the position of Opis is to be determined from the known position of the ford1 over the Zab above Zeilan. From Opis to this ford were 10 ordinary marches, i.e. of 5 parasangs each. Taking Gen. Chesney's estimate of 13 G. miles of distance for each of these marches, and measuring back from the ford along the Zab and the Tigris, we are brought to Eski Baghdad, which we may approximately fix upon for the position of Opis, with as much certainty as the data of the problem allow.

It is however still within the limits of reasonable hope that the position of Opis may receive further light from further exploration of the Tigris and its banks. There ought surely to be some existing evidence of how far Alexander's destruction of the dykes extended up the Tigris. At one point, I believe, we have such evidence. Dr Ross speaking of that branch of the Nahr Wan which left the Tigris at Kaim, says "it is difficult to imagine how the water ever entered this Canal, its ancient bed being seen in section 15 feet above the surface of the Tigris,

1 "The ford by which the Greeks crossed the Zabatus may, I think, be accurately determined. It is still the principal ford in this part of the river, and must, from the nature of the bed of the stream, have been so from the earliest period. It is about 25 miles from the confluence of the Zab and Tigris. A march of 25 stad., or nearly 3 miles, in the direction of the Larissa

would bring them to the Ghazur or Bumadas; and this stream was, I have little doubt, the deep valley formed by the torrent where Mithridates, venturing to attack the retreating army, was signally defeated." Layard, p. 60, and see also p. 226. To this view Mr Ainsworth assents, Commentary, p. 304; and Chesney, Narrative, p. 508.

which, now1 nearly at its highest level, sweeps along the high perpendicular banks." Journal of R. G. S. xI. p. 127. This account seems clearly to point to a dyke, once existing here, which has been removed; and if we assume that the age of this Canal, which is allowed to be "of remote antiquity," goes back as far as Alexander's age, then Opis could not have been lower than Kaim, and may have been higher. Gen. Chesney in fact places Opis at Kaim, and this would tally well with its distance from the Zab, if the Greeks forded it at its mouth; but it is not fordable at its mouth, the actual ford being 25 miles up the river, above Zeilan. It is true that Gen. Chesney supposes the Greeks to have crossed the river by pontoons. Of this however there is no intimation in the narrative; and the remark made (III. iv. 6) that "they arrived at the Tigris," after two days' march from the ford across the Zab, is decisive that they crossed considerably above its mouth.

The identifications which I have submitted above of the Physcus with the Katur or Resas Canal, and of Opis with Eski Baghdad, were originally suggested by Sir H. Rawlinson himself, till (misled apparently by the notion of Sittake being on the road between Babylon and Susa) he abandoned it. The error respecting Sittake appears to be a modern one: for Mr Ainsworth (New Monthly Mag. No. 573, p. 263) cites Cellarius (Notitiæ Orbis Antiqui) as suggesting that Xenophon's Sittake on the Tigris and the Sittake of Pliny, situated (?) between the Tigris and Tornadotus, were different places.

Kænæ.] There are no ruins on the right bank of the Tigris to represent Kænæ, except those at Kalah Sherkat, or (as Sir H. Rawlinson writes the name) Kileh Sherghat. If the latter be the right spelling (and there is no notice of any castle (Kalah) at this point), we may recognize Xen.'s Kano phonetically in Kileh, the nasal liquid n being often replaced by 1,

1 This was in June.

2 That is, if Xen. received the name (Kineh) orally (as under the circumstances of the Retreat at this point we may presume he did, see II. iv. 10), he might and naturally would give it in the form of a Greek word resembling

2

it, just as both Bochart and Layard conceive that he did in the case of the neighbouring city Nimrüd, which he calls Larissa, a name familiar to a Greek ear, supposed by Bochart to be a corruption of Al Resen, by Layard of Al Assur.

=

as it is in Bologna Bononia; Labynetus = Nabonadius; and Zelebi = Zenobia &c. Kileh Sherghat was, under the name of Asshur, the original Assyrian Capital from 1273 B.C. to about 930 B.C., before the seat of government was transferred to Nineveh by Asshur-idannipal, the warlike Sardanapalus of the Greeks. See Rawlinson Hdt. I. pp. 373–377. Kænæ was passed somewhere "in the course of the first march1” from the villages of Parysatis, i.e. on the 4th day before reaching the ford over the Zab (II. iv. 28). Reckoning back from this ford as a point pretty well ascertained (the first that is so in the route beyond the Tigris), we are brought opposite Kîleh Sherghat in the course of the 4th march from the ford.

The fact of their leaving the Tigris and marching up the Zab before crossing it, though not expressly stated, is sufficiently indicated by the remark that "they arrived at the Tigris" near Larissa (III. iv. 6) after two marches from the ford. Nor is this the only instance in the narrative of mention of a river being reserved for the point where it was crossed. The Phrat, for instance, is first mentioned at Thapsacus, though both Gen. Chesney and Mr Ainsworth are convinced that the three previous marches must have been along its banks (cf. 'Travels in the Track &c.' p. 66). The same remark may be applicable to the march along the Physcus before crossing it, and also to the marches between the Phasis and Harpasus (IV. vi. 4 and 5; vii. 1 and 15), some of which lay along the banks probably of both rivers up to the points where they were found to be fordable.

The Editors are indebted for the accompanying map to the kindness of Messrs Bell and Daldy, and Messrs Whitaker, the publishers of an edition of Xenophon's Anabasis by Mr Mac Michael now in the Press.

Journal of Philology. VOL. IV.

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