OPIS
OPIS (
Ὀ̂πις,
Hdt. 1.189), a city of Babylonia, mentioned first by Herodotus, who simply states that
[p. 2.485]the river Tigris flowed by it. Xenonhon, in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, speaks of it as a large city situated upon the Physcus (now
Adhem), and apparently at some distance from its junction with the Tigris. Arrian, describing the return of Alexander from the East, states that he sailed up the Tigris to Opis, destroying on his way the dams which (it was said) the Persians had placed across the river to; prevent any naval force ascending the stream. At Opis he is said to have held a great assembly of all his troops, and to have sent home those who were no longer fit to serve. (
Anab. 7.7.) Strabo speaks of it as in his time a small village, but places it, like Herodotus and Arrian, upon the Tigris (ii. p. 80, xi. p. 529, xvi. p. 739). Captain; Lynch, in his account of the Tigris between
Baghdád and
Sámarrah, considers that some extensive ruins he met with near the angle formed by the
Adhem and Tigris, and the remains of the
Nahr-awán canal, mark the site of Opis.
But the change in the course of the Tigris there observable has led to the destruction of great part of the ancient city. (Lynch,
Geogr. Journ. ix. p. 472; comp. Rawlinson,
Geogr. Journ. x. p. 95.)
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