That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 415 417. LIII.--THE TAKING OF BABYLON BY CYRUS. HERODOTUS. The 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. 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.† * 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. According to the most reliable estimate, the former was about one foot ten and one-half inches; and, 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 onefourth as great. If we substitute hunds for cubits, the statement will 2. And here I may not, omit to tell the use to which the mold 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. be plausible; aud this, probably, is what Herodotus meant, since it has been found that in his description of objects which he had seen he was studiously accurate 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, but very little inferior to it in strength. The center 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 whlch 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, whero persons are wont to sit sometimes on their way to the summit. On the topmost tower there is a spacions 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 save 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.t Outside the temples are two solid 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 frankincence, 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 * 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 religious systems, 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. temple the 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. LIV. THE TAKING OF BABYLON BY CYRUS.-CONTINUED. 1. 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. 2. The later of the two queens, whose name was Nitocris, 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 |