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H. is contrasting broadly and rightly the treeless cornland of Babylonia with Greece.

Strabo (742 ad fin.) says ‘three hundredfold’, without H.'s careful limitation. Lehmann (Fest. für Kiepert, 1898, pp. 305 seq.) argues that the accounts of H. and of Strabo are borrowed independently from Hecataeus (cf. c. 199 n.). His arrangement of the two accounts in parallel columns is useful, though his argument quite breaks down.

φύλλα, ‘blades.’ Ancient (e. g. Theophrastus, viii. 7. 4) and modern writers confirm H. as to the fertility of Babylonia; so Chesney (ii. 602) says ‘those portions which are still cultivated, as round Hillah, show that the region has all the fertility ascribed to it by H.’ An inscription of Assurbanipal claims, with perhaps pardonable exaggeration, that grain grew five cubits high, and that the heads were five-sixths of a cubit (Winckler, Hist. of Babylonia (E. T.), p. 138).

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