"Between the outer limits of the Syro-Arabian desert and the
foot of the great mountain-range of Kurdistan and Luristan
intervenes a territory long famous in the world's history, and
the chief site of three out of the five empires of whose
history, geography, and antiquities it is proposed to treat in
the present volumes. Known to the Jews as Aram-Naharaim, or
'Syria of the two rivers'; to the Greeks and Romans as
Mesopotamia, or 'the between-river country'; to the Arabs as
Al-Jezireh, or, 'the island,' this district has always taken
its name from the streams [the Tigris and Euphrates] which
constitute its most striking feature."
_G. Rawlinson,
Five Great Monarchies: Chaldœa,
chapter 1._
MESSALINA, The infamies of.
See ROME: A. D. 47-54.