Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/89

 S1TTAKE. 67 DOAV delivered would induce the Greeks to become alarmed .vith their actual position and to cross the Tigris with as little delay as possible. At least this was the interpretation which the Greek officers put upon his proceeding ; an interpretation highly plausi- ble, since, in order to reach the bridge over the Tigris, he had been obliged to conduct the Greek troops into a position sufficiently tempting for them to hold, and since he knew that his own pur- poses were purely treacherous. But the Greeks, officers as well Babylon itself, and Pylffi, which is known pretty nearly, as the spot where Babylonia proper commences. The description which Xenophon gives of the Wall of Media is very plain and specific. I see no reason to doubt that he actually saw it, passed through it, and correctly describes it in height as well as breadth. Its entire length he of course only gives from what he was told. His statement appears to me good evidence that there was a Wall of Media, which reached from the Tigris to the Euphrates, or perhaps to some canal cut from the Euphrates, though there exists no mark to show what was the precise locality and di- rection of the Wall. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxiv, 2), in the expedition of the empci-or Julian, saw near Macepracta, on the left bank of the Eu- phrates, the ruins of a wall, " which in ancient times had stretched to a great distance for the defence of Assyria against foreign invasion." It is fair to presume that this was the Wall of Media ; but the position of Mace- practa cannot be assigned. It is important, however, to remember, what I have already stated in this note, that Xenophon did not see, and did not cross either the Wall of Media, or the two canals here mentioned, until many days after the bat- tle of Kunaxa. We know from Herodotus that all the territory of Babylonia was inter- sected by canals, and that there was one canal greater than the rest and navigable, which flowed from the Euphrates to the Tigris, in a direction to the south of east. This coincides pretty well with the direction assigned in Colonel Chesney's map to the Nahr-Malcha or Eegium Flumen, into which the four great canals, described by Xenophon as drawn from the Ti- gris to the Euphrates, might naturally discharge themselves, and still be said to fall into the Euphrates, of which the Nahr-Malcha was as it were a branch. How the level of the two rivers would adjust itself, when the space between them was covered with a network of canals great and small, and when a vast quantity of the water of both was exhausted in fertilizing the earth, is difficult to say. The island wherein tho Greeks stood, at their position near Sittake', before crossing the Tigris, wouli be a parallelogram formed by the Tigris, the Nahr-Malcha, and the tw ) parallel canals joining them. It might well bo called a large i] sland, co ataining many cities and villages, with a large population.