'Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, from September 1850 to June 1852. Edited by the Secretary. Volume X.' [‎116] (249/458)

116
COMMANDER F. JONES.
vessels at any time. The Persians had, therefore, no need to erect such
works for defensive purposes, but having designed them for hydraulic
requirements, it is easily imagined they made use of them when hard
pressed by an invading enemy, according to the invariable custom they
had of laying waste the territory on their retreat, especially necessary,
perhaps, before a victorious army such as Alexander led. The destruction
of the dams, however, while it might do injury to the Macedonian fleet,
certainly redounded to the glory of the conqueror by inflicting cala
mity on the country, and in this light, perhaps, Arrian has recorded it
in an off-hand style, attributing the erection of the works to a wrong
motive* it may be from his own ignorance of their nature; but if it
really happened as described, we must rank the act as barbarous as it
was misconceived on the part of Alexander, and probably perpetrated
during an orgie such as that which consigned Persipolis to the flames.
In my former narrative of the surrey of K&tul, I have expressed a
doubt as to the existence of dams across the Tigris, but since an extended
examination of the derivatives from it has been made, I have become
more impressed with its great magnitude, and now believe that either
arm of it must have had its respective dam. Considering also the
evidence of Arrian with reference to these works, I have little hesitation
in according to this great intestinal conduit an antiquity coeval with
the Macedonian conquest of the East from the destruction of the
impediments by Alexander. The subsequent recognition of the canal
as the Tornadotus of Pliny, not only in name but in the ruined
Apamia of Antiochus Soter still on its banks, places it in a highly
flourishing condition in the time of the Seleucidee, and we may infer,
also, that it was equally prosperous and rich under the Persian rule
prior to the Macedonian invasion, or Alexander would not have led h is
troops to the conquest of a barren soil. Premising this in the M 10
words above, the classic reader may, perhaps, without much inge
nuity, recognize the K&tul-al-Kesr&wf in the Phuskus* of Xenophons * I
* I have adopted this orthography of the name of the stream recorded by Xen0 P h( S i f f()r
Dr. Vincent’s paper on the site of Opis (Vide “ Commerce of the Ancients,” vol. i. P-
I have not the Greek original, nor can I find the term written any where in the Greek chara ° '
Spelman’s translation gives Physcus as the English equivalent, and this orthography W 11 s
hitherto confused rather than cleared the “ queetis vexata” of its identity. Phuskus app
to me an appropriate name enough for such an internal conduit as traceable in some way tnr 6
&V0Xy Or $voxo$> both deriyates I think of the word $ va) in the Greek language.
the decision, however, to the learned. The clever and laborious paper on Opis by tb0
siog such copious
tie bridges, musl
from the Tigris,
tract, by a gland
also, offered the
represented to 1
country here woi
to a closer prox
te full benefit o
lie Tigris by a si
to further navi
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