Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/159

 of superstition, imploring a blessing on their voyage, and setting afloat a toy, like a vessel rigged and decorated, which, if it is dashed to pieces by the rocks, is to be accepted by the ocean as an offering for the escape of the vessel."

35. Apologus.—This was the city known as Obollah, which was an important port during Saracen times, and from which caravan-routes led in all directions. As "Ubulu, in the land of Bit-Yakin" it figures in many of the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions. It was among the conquered places named in the Nimrud Inscription of Tiglath-PileserIII (745–727 B. C.) whose arms were carried from Bit-Yakin "as far as the river Uknu (Cynos, Wadi ed Dawasir?) on the coast of the Lower Sea," and who received from Merodach-Baladan, of Yakin, king of the sea, a tribute of "gold—the dust of his land—precious stones, timber, striped clothing, spices of all kinds, cattle and sheep."

The location of Obollah seems always to have given it importance as a commercial center. Under the Seleucidae, and in the time of Strabo, Teredon was the leading port; while in the time of the Periplus Obollah had regained its former position.

The name seems derived from Obal, son of Joktan (Gen. X, 28).

35. Charax Spasini is the modern Mohammarah (30° 24′N., 48° 18′E.), on the Shatt-el-Arab, at its confluence with the Karun. Pliny says (VI, 31) that it was founded by Alexander the Great, whose name it bore; destroyed by the inundations of the rivers, rebuilt by Antiochus Epiphanes under the name Antiochia, again overflowed, and again restored, protected by three miles of embankments, by Spasinus, "king of the neighboring Arabians, whom Juba has incorrectly described as a satrap of King Antiochus." Formerly, Pliny says, it stood near the shore and had a harbor of its own; "but now stands a considerable distance from the sea. In no part of the world have alluvial desposits been formed by the rivers more rapidly and to a great extent than here." (At the present day it is about 40 miles from the gulf.)

Pliny's reference to the possession of the lower Tigris by an Arabian chieftain, the name of whose city he extends to the "Characene" district of Elymais, or Elam, indicates how large a part in the affairs of Parthian Empire may have been played, at the date of the Periplus, by its subjects south of the Persian Gulf. Charax was an important stronghold of Parthian Empire, protecting its shipping trade; and was the home of that Isidorus whose works, written in the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, include the Mansiones Parthicae, a detailed account of the overland caravan-route from Antioch in Syria