urnefort deserve an honorable exception.]

[Footnote 49a: This is not a title, but the name of a great Persian
family. St. Martin, iii. 79.--M.]

[Footnote 50: Famosi nominis latro, says Ammianus; a high encomium
for an Arab. The tribe of Gassan had settled on the edge of Syria, and
reigned some time in Damascus, under a dynasty of thirty-one kings, or
emirs, from the time of Pompey to that of the Khalif Omar. D'Herbelot,
Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 360. Pococke, Specimen Hist. Arabicae,
p. 75-78. The name of Rodosaces does not appear in the list. * Note:
Rodosaces-malek is king. St. Martin considers that Gibbon has fallen
into an error in bringing the tribe of Gassan to the Euphrates. In
Ammianus it is Assan. M. St. Martin would read Massanitarum, the same
with the Mauzanitae of Malala.--M.]

[Footnote 51: See Ammianus, (xxiv. 1, 2,) Libanius, (Orat. Parental. c.
110, 111, p. 334,) Zosimus, (l. iii. p. 164-168.) * Note: This Syriac or
Chaldaic has relation to its position; it easily bears the signification
of the division of the waters. M. St. M. considers it the Missice of
Pliny, v. 26. St. Martin, iii. 83.--M.]

The fertile province of Assyria, [52] which stretched beyond the Tigris,
as far as the mountains of Media, [53] extended about four hundred miles
from the ancient wall of Macepracta, to the territory of Basra, where
the united streams of the Euphrates and Tigris discharge themselves into
the Persian Gulf. [54] The whole country might have claimed the peculiar
name of 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
labor 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; [5