[58] Xen. Anab. i, 4, 6. To require the wives or children of generals in service, as hostages for fidelity, appears to have been not unfrequent with Persian kings. On the other hand, it was remarked as a piece of gross obsequiousness in the Argeian Nikostratus, who commanded the contingent of his countrymen serving under Artaxerxes Ochus in Egypt, that he volunteered to bring up his son to the king as a hostage, without being demanded (Theopompus, Frag. 135 [ed. Wichers] ap. Athenæ. vi, p. 252).
[59] Xen. Anab. i, 4, 7-9.
[60] Diodor. xiv, 21.
[61] See the remarks of Mr. Ainsworth, Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 58-61; and other citations respecting the difficult road through the pass of Beilan, in Mützel’s valuable notes on Quintus Curtius, iii, 20, 13, p. 101.
[62] Neither the Chalus, nor the Daradax, nor indeed the road followed by Cyrus in crossing Syria from the sea to the Euphrates, can be satisfactorily made out (Koch, Zug der Zehn Tausend, p. 36, 37).
Respecting the situation of Thapsakus,—placed erroneously by Rennell lower down the river at Deir, where it stands marked even in the map annexed to Col. Chesney’s Report on the Euphrates, and by Reichard higher up the river, near Bir—see Ritter, Erdkunde, part x, B. iii; West Asien, p. 14-17, with the elaborate discussion, p. 972-978, in the same volume; also the work of Mr. Ainsworth above cited, p. 70. The situation of Thapsakus is correctly placed in Colonel Chesney’s last work (Euphr. and Tigr. p. 213), and in the excellent map accompanying that work; though I dissent from his view of the march of Cyrus between the pass of Beilan and Thapsakus.
Thapsakus appears to have been the most frequented and best-known passage over the Euphrates, throughout the duration of the Seleukid kings, down to 100 B.C. It was selected as a noted point, to which observations and calculations might be conveniently referred, by Eratosthenes and other geographers (see Strabo, ii, p. 79-87). After the time when the Roman empire became extended to the Euphrates, the new Zeugma, higher up the river near Bir or Bihrejik (about the 37th parallel of latitude) became more used and better known, at least to the Roman writers.
The passage at Thapsakus was in the line of road from Palmyra to Karrhæ in Northern Mesopotamia; also from Seleukeia (on the Tigris below Bagdad) to the other cities founded in Northern Syria by Seleukus Nikator and his successors, Antioch on the Orontes, Seleukeia in Pieria, Laodikeia, Antioch ad Taurum, etc.
The ford at Thapsakus (says Mr. Ainsworth, p. 69, 70) “is celebrated to this day as the ford of the Anezeh or Beduins. On the right bank of the Euphrates there are the remains of a paved causeway leading to the very banks of the river, and continued on the opposite side.”
[63] Xen. Anab. i, 4, 12-18.