carrying off the slaves. The wish of the satrap to put an insult on
Cyrus, as his personal enemy,[124] through Parysatis, thus proved a
sentence of ruin to these unhappy villagers. Five more days’ march,
called twenty parasangs, brought them to the banks of the river
Zabatus, or the Greater Zab, which flows into the Tigris near a
town now called Senn. During the first of these five days, they saw
on the opposite side of the Tigris a large town called Kænæ, from
whence they received supplies of provisions, brought across by the
inhabitants upon rafts supported by inflated skins.[125]
[122] There seems reason to believe that in ancient times the
Tigris, above Bagdad, followed a course more to the westward, and
less winding, than it does now. The situation of Opis cannot be
verified. The ruins of a large city were seen by Captain Lynch
near the confluence of the river Adhem with the Tigris, which he
supposed to be Opis, in lat. 34°.
[123] Xen. Anab. ii, 4, 26.
[124] Ktesias, Fragm. 18, ed. Bähr.
[125] Xen. Anab. ii, 5, 26-28.
Mannert, Rennell, Mr. Ainsworth, and most modern commentators,
identify this town of Καιναὶ or Kænæ with the modern town Senn;
which latter place Mannert (Geogr. der Röm. v. p. 333) and
Rennell (Illustrations p. 129) represent to be near the Lesser
Zab instead of the Greater Zab.
To me it appears that the locality assigned by Xenophon to
Καιναὶ, does not at all suit the modern town of Senn. Nor is
there much real similarity of name between the two; although our
erroneous way of pronouncing the Latin name _Caenae_, creates a
delusive appearance of similarity. Mr. Ainsworth shows that some
modern writers have been misled in the same manner by identifying
the modern town of Sert with Tigrano-_certa_.
It is a perplexing circumstance in the geography of Xenophon’s
work, that he makes no mention of the Lesser Zab, which yet he
must have crossed. Herodotus notices them both, and remarks on
the fact that though distinct rivers, both bore the same name (v,
52). Perhaps in drawing up his narrative after the expedition,
Xenophon may have so far forgotten, as to fancy that two
synonymous rivers mentioned as distinct in his memoranda, were
only one.
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