PART III.

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS

FROM

ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY.

The Taking of Babylon by Cyrus.-Herodotus.

[The building of Babylon is supposed to have been commenced about twenty-two centuries B.C. In the earliest times it was a city of minor importance, Ur and other cities being far superior in population and influence. The Chaldees (kal-deez') seem to have occupied at first the shores of the Persian Gulf, and to have spread northward, until about 1700 B.C., when the seat of their government was fixed at Babylon. About 680 B.C., Babylon became subject to Assyria, and, under Nebuchadnezzar, was embellished with many edifices of wonderful extent and magnificence. The following description of the city and its capture by Cyrus (538 B.C.) is taken from the "History of Herodotus"-called, sometimes, the "Father of History."]

1. ASSYRIA possesses a vast number of great cities, whereof the most renowned and the strongest at this time* was Babylon, -whither, after the fall of Nineveh, the seat of government had been removed. The following is a description of the place:The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width, and two hundred in height.t

During the time of the conquests of Cyrus the Great,-in the latter part of the sixth century B.C. + There is some doubt as to the precise length of the royal, as well as the common, cubit. Ac. cording to the most reliable estimate, the former was about one foot ten and one-half inches; and,

2. And here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was wrought. As fast as they dug the moat, the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks; and when a sufficient number was completed, they baked the bricks in kilns. Then they set to building, and began with bricking the borders of the moat, after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot. bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts. The bitumen used in the work was brought to Babylon from the Is, a small stream which flows into the Euphrates, at the point where the city of the same name stands, eight days' journey from Babylon. Lumps of bitumen are found in great abundance in this river. 3. The city is divided into two portions by the river which runs through the midst of it. This river is the Euphrates, a broad, deep, swift stream, which rises in Armenia, and empties itself into the Erythræan Sea. The city wall is brought down on both sides to the edge of the stream; thence from the corners of the wall there is carried along each bank of the river a fence of burnt bricks. The houses are mostly three and four stories high; the streets all run in straight lines, not only those parallel to the river, but also the cross streets which lead down to the water-side. At the river end of these cross streets are low gates in the fence that skirts the stream, which are, like the great gates in the outer wall, of brass, and open on the water.

4. The outer wall is the main defense of the city. There is, however, a second inner wall, of less thickness than the first,

consequently, the walls of Babylon must have been about three hundred and seventy-five feet high, and nearly ninety-four feet in width. This appears like a very great exaggeration on the part of Herodotus, especially as other ancient writers give the dimensions as only one-fourth as great. If we substitute hands for cubits, the statement will be plausible; and this, probably, is what Herodotus meant, since it has been found that in his descriptions of objects which he had seen he was studiously

accurate.

but very little inferior to it in strength. The centre of each division of the town was occupied by a fortress. In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size; in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus, a square inclosure, two furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass; which was also remaining in my time. In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight.

5. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. When one is about half-way up, one finds a resting-place and seats, where persons are wont to sit some time on their way to the summit. On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. There is no statue of any kind set up in the place, nor is the chamber occupied of nights by any one but a single native woman, who, as the Chaldeans,* the priests of this god, affirm, is chosen for himself by the Deity out of all the women of the land.

6. Below, in the same precinct, there is a second temple, in which is a sitting figure of Jupiter, all of gold. Before the figure stands a large golden table, and the throne whereon it sits, and the base on which the throne is placed, are likewise of gold. The Chaldeans told me that all the gold together was eight hundred talents' weight. Outside the temple are two altars, one of solid gold, on which it is only lawful to offer sucklings; the other, a common altar, but of great size, on which the full-grown animals are sacrificed. It is also on the great altar that the Chaldeans burn the frankincense, which is offered to the amount of a thousand talents' weight, every year, at the festival of the god.

7. In the time of Cyrus there was likewise in this temple the

The Chaldeans were a branch of the race which inhabited Babylonia from the earliest times. With this race originated the art of writing, the building of cities, the institution of religicus sys tems, and the cultivation of science, particularly astronomy.

+ The smaller talent, used in weighing gold, was a little more than three-quarters of an ounce. Hence there must have been more than six hundredweight of gold used in these articles.

figure of a man, twelve cubits high, entirely of solid gold. I myself did not see this figure, but I relate what the Chaldeans report concerning it. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, plotted to carry the statue off, but had not the hardihood to lay his hands upon it. Xerxes, however, the son of Darius, killed the priest who forbade him to move the statue, and took it away. Besides the ornaments which I have mentioned, there are a large number of private offerings in this holy precinct.

8. Many sovereigns have ruled over this city of Babylon, and lent their aid to the building of its walls and the adornment of its temples, of whom I shall make mention in my Assyrian history. Among them were two women. Of these, the earlier, called Semiramis, held the throne five generations before the later princess. She raised certain embankments well worthy of inspection, in the plain near Babylon, to control the river, which, till then, used to overflow, and flood the whole country round about.

9. The later of the two queens, whose name was Nitócris, a wiser princess than her predecessor, not only left behind her, as memorials of her occupancy of the throne, the works which I shall presently describe, but also, observing the great power and restless enterprise of the Medes, who had taken so large a number of cities, and among them Nineveh,* and expecting to be attacked in her turn, made all possible exertions to increase the defenses of her empire. And first, whereas the river Euphrates, which traverses the city, ran formerly with a straight course to Babylon, she, by certain excavations, which she made at some distance up the stream, rendered it so winding that it comes three several times in sight of the same village, a village in Assyria, which is called Arderic'ca; and to this day, they who would go from over sea to Babylon, on descending the river touch three times, and on three different days, at this very place. 10. She also made an embankment along each side of the Euphrates, wonderful both for breadth and height, and dug a

* Nineveh, situated on the Tigris River, was at one time perhaps the most splendid city in the world. It was taken and destroyed by the Medes under their king, Cyaxʼares (6)6 B.C). In the time of Herodotus, therefore, it had ceased to exist.

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basin for a lake a great way above Babylon, close alongside of the stream, which was sunk everywhere to the point where they came to water, and was of such breadth that the whole circuit measured four hundred and twenty furlongs. The soil dug out of this basin was made use of in the embankments along the water-side. When the excavation was finished, she had stones brought, and bordered with them the entire margin of the reservoir. These two things were done, the river made to wind, and the lake excavated, that the stream might be slacker by reason of the number of curves, and the voyage be rendered circuitous; and that at the end of the voyage it might be necessary to skirt the lake and so make a long round. All these works were on that side of Babylon where the passes lay, and the roads into Media were the straitest; and the aim of the queen in making them was to prevent the Medes from holding intercourse with the Babylonians, and so to keep them in ignorance of her affairs. .

11. The expedition of Cyrus was undertaken against the son of this princess, who bore the same name as her father Labynetus, and was King of the Assyrians. The Great King, when he goes to the wars, is always supplied with provisions carefully prepared at home, and with cattle of his own. Water too from the river Choaspes (ko-as'peez), which flows by Susa, is taken with him for his drink, as that is the only water which the kings of Persia taste. Wherever he travels, he is attended by a number of four-wheeled cars drawn by mules, in which the Choaspes water, ready boiled for use, and stored in flagons of silver, is moved with him from place to place.

12. Cyrus, on his way to Babylon came to the banks of the Gyndes (jin-deez'), a stream which; rising in the Matienian. (ma-she-e'ne-an) Mountains, runs through the country of the Dardanians, and empties itself into the river Tigris. The Tigris, after receiving the Gyndes, flows on by the city of Opis, and discharges its waters into the Erythæan Sea. When Cyrus reached this stream, which could only be passed in boats, one of the sacred white horses accompanying his march, full of spirit and high mettle, walked into the water and tried to