Acesines
- a river in India, which falls into the Indus, now the Chenaub, Curt. 9, 3, 20; Mel. 3, 7, 6; Plin. 6, 20, 23, 71 al.
ACESINES (Ἀκεσίνης), a river of Sicily, which flows, into the sea to the south of Tauromenium. Its name occurs only in Thucydides (Thuc. 4.25) on occasion of the attack made on Naxos by the Messenians in B.C. 425 : but it is evidently the same river which is called by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 3.8) ASINES, and by Vibius Sequester (p. 4) ASINIUS. Both these writers place it in the immediate neighbourhood of Tauromenium, and it can be no other than the river now called by the Arabic name of Cantara, a considerable stream, which, after following throughout its course the northern boundary of Aetna, discharges itself into the sea immediately to the S. of Capo Schizò, the site of the ancient Naxos. The ONOBALAS of Appian (App. BC 5.109) is probably only another name for the same river. Cluverius appears to be mistaken in regarding the Flume Freddo as the Acesines : it is a very small stream, while the Cantara is one of the largest rivers in Sicily, and could hardly have been omitted by Pliny. (Cluver. Sicil. p. 93; Mannert, vol. ix. pt. 2. p. 284.)
[E.H.B]ACESINES (Ἀκεσίνης: Chenab: Dionysius Periegetes, 5.1138, makes the i long, if any choose to consider this an authority), the chief of the five great tributaries of the Indus, which give the name of Panjab (i. e. Five Waters) to the great plain of NW. India. These rivers are described, in their connection with each other, under INDIA The Acesines was the second of them, reckoning from the W., and, after receiving the waters of all the rest, retained its name to its junction with the Indus, in lat. 28° 55′ N., long. 70° 28′ E. Its Sanscrit name was Chandrabhaga, which would have been Hellenized into Σανδροφάγος, a word so like to Ἀνδροφάγος, or Ἀλεξανδροφάγος, that the followers of Alexander changed the name to avoid the evil omen, the more so perhaps on account of the disaster which befell the Macedonian fleet at the turbulent junction of the river with the Hydaspes (Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, vol. iv. pt. 1. p. 456: for other references see INDIA)
[P.S]The Chenâb, a river of India, emptying into the Indus. See Hydaspes.