Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 48

JOSEPH SKINNER

Newcastle University

A Central Asian river dismissed by some as imaginary but variously identified by others as either the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus, BA 6 B2), a major waterway which rises in the Pamirs and empties into the Aral Sea (although the river’s course may well have altered since antiquity, it being equally possible that it once drained into the CASPIAN SEA), or the Atrek river (Ochus, BA 96 C2) which divides northern Iran from Turkmenistan and drains into the Caspian (for the Ochus, cf. Apollodorus BNJ 779 F4 = Strabo 11.7.3/C509; Strabo 11.11.5/C518). While the development, maintenance, and regulation of irrigation systems designed to boost agricultural output had long been seen as characteristically “royal” activities by Ancient Near Eastern monarchs, Herodotus’ somewhat fantastical account (3.117) of hydraulic works undertaken by the Persian king in order to extort MONEY from tribes inhabiting the lands adjacent to its five branches is clearly designed to illustrate the transgressive and oppressive nature of Persian royal power—and perhaps DARIUS I’s fiscal innovations in particular—rather than providing an accurate account of local hydropolitics. The pairing of five tribes (CHORASMIANS, HYRCANIANS, PARTHIANS, SARANGAE, THAMANAEANS) with five tributaries is highly suspicious (cf. 7.129.1 on Thessalian RIVERS), since the number five is recognized to be one of Herodotus’ “typical” NUMBERS. Qanat irrigation systems dating from the ACHAEMENID era were, however, known to ancient authors (e.g., Polyb. 10.28.1–4) on the foothills of the Elburz Mountains.

SEE ALSO: Agriculture; Engineering; Geography; Monarchy