Note 559 — Chapter XIX · ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.
Reading edition
About the date-palms (φοίνικες) in the ancient Babylonia, see Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii, 6, 2-6; Xenoph. Cyrop. vii, 5, 12; Anab. ii, 3, 15; Diodor. ii, 53: there were some which bore no fruit, but which afforded good wood for house-purposes and furniture.
Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and produce of the soil in Babylonia as Herodotus, though the two hundred-fold, and sometimes three hundred-fold, which was stated to the latter as the produce of the land in grain, appears in his statement cut down to fifty-fold, or one hundred-fold (Hist. Plant. viii, 7, 4).
Respecting the numerous useful purposes for which the date-palm was made to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and sixty), see Strabo, xiv, p. 742; Ammian. Marcell. xxiv, 3.