were covered by Lucillianus with a flying de- CHAP tachment of fifteen hundred light-armed sol- XXIV. diers, whose active vigilance observed the most distant signs, and conveyed the earliest notice of any hostile approach. Dagalaiphus, and Secundinus duke of Osrhoene, conducted the troops of the rear-guard; the baggage, securely, proceeded in the intervals of the columns; and the ranks, from a motive either of use or ostentation, were formed in such open order, that the whole line of march extended almost ten miles. The ordinary post of Julian was at the head of the centre column; but as he preferred the duties of a general to the state of a monarch, he rapidly moved, with a small escort of light cavalry, to the front, the rear, the flanks, wherever his presence could animate or protect the march of the Roman army. The country which they traversed, from the Chaboras to the cultivated lands of Assyria, may be considered as a part of the desert of Arabia, a dry and barren waste, which could never be improved by the most powerful arts of human industry. Julian marched over the same ground which had been trod above seven hundred years before by the footsteps of the younger Cyrus, and which is described by one of the companions of his expedition, the sage and heroic Xenophon." "The * See the first book of the Anabasis, p. 45, 46. This pleasing work is original and authentic. Yet Xenophon's memory, perhaps, many years after the expedition, has sometimes betrayed him; and the dis tances which he marks are often larger than either a soldier or a geographer will allow. CHAP. His suc ress. country was a plain throughout, as even as the "sea, and full of wormwood; and if any other "kind of shrubs or reeds grew there, they had "all an aromatic smell; but no trees could be 66 seen. Bustards and ostriches, antelopes and "wild asses, appeared to be the only inhabitants "of the deserts; and the fatigues of the march were alleviated by the amusements of the chase." The loose sand of the desert was frequently raised by the wind into clouds of dust: and a great number of the soldiers of Julian, with their tents were suddenly thrown to the ground by the violence of an unexpected hurricane. 66 The sandy plains of Mesopotamia were abandoned to the antelopes and wild asses of the desert; but a variety of populous towns and villages were pleasantly situated on the banks of the Euphrates, and in the islands which are occasionally formed by that river. The city of Annah, or Anatho, the actual residence of an Arabian emir, is composed of two long streets, which inclose, within a natural fortification, a small island in the midst, and two fruitful spots on either side, of the Euphrates. The warlike inhabitants of Anatho shewed a disposition to Mr. Spelman, the English translator of the Anabasis, (vol. i. p. 51), confounds the antelope with the roe-buck, and the wild ass with the zebra. See Voyages de Tavernier, part i, l. iii, p. 316, and more especially Viaggi di Pietro della Valle, tom. i, lett. xvii, p. 671. &c. He was ignorant of the old name and condition of Annah. Our blind travellers seldom possess any previous knowledge of the countries which they visit. Shaw and Tournefort deserve an honourable exception. XXIV. stop the march of a Roman emperor; till they CHAP. were diverted from such fatal presumption, by the mild exhortations of prince Hormisdas, and the approaching terrors of the fleet and army. They implored, and experienced, the clemency of Julian, who transplanted the people to an advantageous settlement near Chalcis in Syria, and admitted Pusæus, the governor, to an honourable rank in his service and friendship But the impregnable fortress of Thilutha could scorn the menace of a siege; and the emperor was obliged to content himself with an insulting promise, that when he had subdued the interior provinces of Persia, Thilutha would no longer refuse to grace the triumph of the conqueror. The inhabitants of the open towns, unable to resist, and unwilling to yield, fled with precipitation: and their houses, filled with spoil and provisions were occupied by the soldiers of Julian, who massacred, without remorse, and without punishment, some defenceless women. During the march, the Surenas, or Persian general, and Malek Rodosaces, the renowned emir of the tribe of Gassan,' incessantly hovered round the army: every straggler was intercepted; every detachment was attacked; and the valiant Hormisdas escaped with some diffi d Famosi nominis latro, says Ammianus; an high encomium for an Arab. The tribe of Gassan had settled on the edge of Syria, and reigned sometime in Damascus, under a dynasty of thirty-one kings, or emirs, from the time of Pompey to that of the Khalif Omar. D'Herbelot, Bibliothéque Orientale, p. 360. Pocock, Specimen Hist. Ara. bice, p. 75-78. The name of Rodosaces does not appear in the list. XXIV. CHAP. culty from their hands. But the barbarians were finally repulsed; the country became every day less favourable to the operations of cavalry; and when the Romans arrived at Macepracta, they perceived the ruins of the wall, which had been constructed by the ancient kings of Assyria, to secure their dominions from the incursions of the Medes. These preliminaries of the expedition of Julian appear to have employed about fifteen days; and we may compute near three hundred miles from the fortress of Circesium to the wall of Macepracta. Descrip- The fertile province of Assyria,' which tion of Assyria. stretched beyond the Tigris, as far as the mountains of Media," extended about four hundred miles from the ancient wall of Macepracta to theterritory of Basra, where the united streams of the Euphrates and Tigris discharge themselves into the Persian gulf." The whole coun * See Ammianus, (xxvi, 1, 2); Libanins, (Orat. Parental. c. 110, 111, p. 334); Zosimus, (1. iii, p. 164–168). f The description of Assyria is furnished by Herodotus, (l. i, c. 192, &c.), who sometimes writes for children, and sometimes for philoso phers; by Strabo, (l. xvi, p. 1070-1082), and by Ammianus, (1. xxiii, c. 6). The most useful of the modern travellers are Tavernier, (part i, l. ii, p. 226-258); Otter, (tom. ii, p. 35-69, and 189-224), and Niebuhr.(tom. ii, p. 172-288). Yet I much regret that the Irak Arabi of Abulfeda has not been translated. * Ammianus remarks, that the primitive Assyria, which comprehended Ninus (Nineveh) and Arbela, had assumed the more recent and peculiar appellation of Adiabene; and he seems to fix Teredon, Vologesia, and Apollonia, as the extreme cities of the actual province of Assyria. The two rivers unite at Apamea, or Corna, (one hundred miles from the Persian gulf), into the broad stream of the Pasitigris, or Shat ul Arab. The Euphrates formerly reached the sea by a sepa rate channel, which was obstructed and diverted by the citizens of Orchoe, about twenty miles to the south-east of modern Basra, (D'Anville, in the Memoiresde l'Acad. des Inscriptions, tom, xxx. p. 170- 7 XXIV. try might have claimed the peculiar name of CHAP. Mesopotamia; as the two rivers, which are never more distant than fifty, approach, between Bagdad and Babylon, within twenty-five miles of each other. A multitude of artificial canals, dug without much labour in a soft and yielding soil, connected the rivers and intersected the plain of Assyria. The uses of these artificial canals were various and important. They served to discharge the superfluous waters from one river into the other, at the season of their respective inundations. Subdividing themselves into smaller and smaller branches, they refreshed the dry lands, and supplied the deficiency of rain. They facilitated the intercourse of peace and commerce; and as the dams could be speedily broke down, they armed the despair of the Assyrians with the means of opposing a sudden deluge to the progress of an invading army. To the soil and climate of Assyria, nature had denied some of her choicest gifts, the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree; but the food which supports the life of man, and particularly wheat and barley, were produced with inexhaustible fertility; and the husbandman, who committed his seed to the earth, was frequently rewarded with an increase of two, or even of three, hundred. The face of the country was interspersed with groves of innumerable palm-trees; and the diligent natives celebrated, either in verse or prose, the three The learned Kæmpfer, as a botanist, an antiquary, and a traveller, has exhausted (Amœnitat. Exoticæ, Fascicul. iv, p. 660-764) the whole subject of palm-trees. |