CHAPTER XIX.

ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.

The name of the Assyrians, who formed one wing of this early system of intercourse and commerce, rests chiefly upon the great cities of Nineveh and Babylon. To the Assyrians of Nineveh (as has been already mentioned) is ascribed in early times a very extensive empire, covering much of Upper Asia, as well as Mesopotamia or the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Respecting this empire,—its commencement, its extent, or even the mode in which it was put down,—nothing certain can be affirmed; but it seems unquestionable that many great and flourishing cities,—and a population inferior in enterprise, but not in industry, to the Phenicians,—were to be found on the Euphrates and Tigris, in times anterior to the first Olympiad. Of these cities, Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates were the chief;[551] the latter being in some sort of dependence, probably, on the sovereigns of Nineveh, yet governed by kings or chiefs of its own, and comprehending an hereditary order of priests named Chaldæans, masters of all the science and literature as well as of the religious ceremonies current among the people, and devoted, from very early times, to that habit of astronomical observation which their brilliant sky so much favored.

[551] Herodot. i, 178. Τῆς δὲ Ἀσσυρίης ἐστὶ μέν κου καὶ ἄλλα πολίσματα μεγάλα πολλά· τὸ δὲ ὀνομαστότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον, καὶ ἔνθα σφι, τῆς Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, τὰ βασιλήϊα κατεστήκεε, ἦν Βαβυλών.

The existence of these and several other great cities is an important item to be taken in, in our conception of the old Assyria: Opis on the Tigris, and Sittakê on one of the canals very near the Tigris, can be identified (Xenoph. Anab. ii, 4, 13-25): compare Diodor. ii, 11.

The people called Assyrians or Syrians—for among the Greek authors no constant distinction is maintained between the two[552]— were distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by Mount Zagros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount Ararat, by which they were separated from the Medes,—and extending from thence westward and southward to the Euxine sea, the river Halys, the Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf,—thus covering the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates south of Armenia, as well as Syria and Syria-Palæstine, and the territory eastward of the Halys called Kappadokia. But the Chaldæan order of priests appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian gulf. The vast, rich, and lofty temple of Bêlus in that city, served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount ascendency of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans,—though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the Euxine.[553]

[552] Herodot. i, 72; iii, 90-91; vii, 63; Strabo, xvi, p. 736, also ii, p. 84, in which he takes exception to the distribution of the οἰκουμένη (inhabited portion of the globe) made by Eratosthenês, because it did not include in the same compartment (σφραγὶς) Syria proper and Mesopotamia: he calls Ninus and Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73).

The Homeric names Ἀρίμοι, Ἐρεμβοὶ (the first in the Iliad, ii, 783, the second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the Oriental name of this race _Aram_; it seems more ancient, in the Greek habits of speech, than _Syrians_ (see Strabo, xvi, p. 785).

The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stêsichorus, recognized _Arabus_ as the son of Hermês, by Throniê, daughter of Bêlus (Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. Marktscheffel; Strabo, i, p. 42).

[553] Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of this conquest of Babylon by Chaldæan barbarians from the northern mountains as a certain fact, explaining the great development of the Babylonian empire under Nabopolasar and Nebuchadnezzar from 630-580 B. C.; it was, he thinks, the new Chaldæan conquerors who thus extended their dominion over Judæa and Phenicia.

I agree with Volney (Chronologie des Babyloniens, ch. x, p. 215) in thinking this statement both unsupported and improbable. Mannert seems to suppose the Chaldæans of Arabian origin (Geogr. der Gr. und Röm., part v, s. 2, ch. xii, p. 419). The passages of Strabo (xvi, p. 739) are more favorable to this opinion than to that of Heeren; but we make out nothing distinct respecting the Chaldæans except that they were the priestly order among the Assyrians of Babylon, as they are expressly termed by Herodotus—ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, ἐόντες ἱρέες τούτου τοῦ θεοῦ (of Zeus Bêlus) (Herodot. i, 181).

The Chalybes and Chaldæi of the northern mountains seem to be known only through Xenophon (Anab. iv, 3, 4; v, 5, 17; Cyrop. iii, 2, 1); they are rude barbarians, and of their exploits or history no particulars reach us.

There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their astronomical observations, which cannot be traced as of definite and recorded date higher than the era of Nabonassar[554] (747 B. C.), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times, there can be no doubt, that compared with any of their contemporaries of the sixth century B. C.—either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics—they stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thalês and Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by Herodotus[555] to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians; and the continuous observation of the heavens both by the Egyptian and Chaldæan priests, had determined with considerable exactness both the duration of the solar year and other longer periods of astronomical recurrence; thus impressing upon intelligent Greeks the imperfection of their own calendars, and furnishing them with a basis not only for enlarged observations of their own, but also for the discovery and application of those mathematical theories whereby astronomy first became a science.

[554] The earliest Chaldæan astronomical observation, known to the astronomer Ptolemy, both precise and of ascertained date to a degree sufficient for scientific use, was a lunar eclipse of the 19th March 721 B. C.—the 27th year of the era of Nabonassar (Ideler, Ueber die Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, p. 19, Berlin, 1806). Had Ptolemy known any older observations conforming to these conditions, he would not have omitted to notice them: his own words in the Almagest testify how much he valued the knowledge and comparison of observations taken at distant intervals (Almagest, b. 3, p. 62, ap. Ideler, _l. c._ p. 1), and at the same time imply that he had none more ancient than the era of Nabonassar (Alm. iii, p. 77, ap. Idel. p. 169).

That the Chaldæans had been, long before this period, in the habit of observing the heavens, there is no reason to doubt; and the exactness of those observations cited by Ptolemy implies (according to the judgment of Ideler _ib._ p. 167) long previous practice. The period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations, after which the moon reverts nearly to the same positions in reference to the apsides and nodes, and after which eclipses return nearly in the same order and magnitude, appears to have been discovered by the Chaldæans (“Defectus ducentis viginti tribus mensibus redire in suos orbes certum est,” Pliny, H. N. ii, 13), and they deduced from hence the mean daily motions of the moon with a degree of accuracy which differs only by four seconds from modern lunar tables (Geminus, Isagoge in Arati Phænomena, c. 15; Ideler, _l. c._ pp. 153, 154, and in his Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Absch. ii, p. 207).

There seem to have been Chaldæan observations, both made and recorded, of much greater antiquity than the era of Nabonassar; though we cannot lay much stress on the date of 1903 years anterior to Alexander the Great, which is mentioned by Simplicius (ad Aristot. de Cœlo, p. 123) as being the earliest period of the Chaldæan observations sent from Babylon by Kallisthenês to Aristotle. Ideler thinks that the Chaldæan observations anterior to the era of Nabonassar were useless to astronomers from the want of some fixed era, or definite cycle, to identify the date of each of them. The common civil year of the Chaldæans had been from the beginning (like that of the Greeks) a lunar year, kept in a certain degree of harmony with the sun by cycles of lunar years and intercalation. Down to the era of Nabonassar, the calender was in confusion, and there was nothing to verify either the time of accession of the kings, or that of astronomical phenomena observed, except the days and months of this lunar year. In the reign of Nabonassar, the astronomers at Babylon introduced (not into civil use, but for their own purposes and records) the Egyptian solar year,—of three hundred and sixty-five days, or twelve months of thirty days each, with five added days, beginning with the first of the month Thoth, the commencement of the Egyptian year,—and they thus first obtained a continuous and accurate mode of marking the date of events. It is not meant that the Chaldæans then for the first time obtained from the Egyptians the _knowledge_ of the solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, but that they then for the first time adopted it in their notation of time for astronomical purposes, fixing the precise moment at which they began. Nor is there the least reason to suppose that the era of Nabonassar coincided with any political revolution or change of dynasty. Ideler discusses this point (pp. 146-173, and Handbuch der Chronol. pp. 215-220). Syncellus might correctly say—Ἀπὸ Ναβονασάρου τοὺς χρόνους τῆς τῶν ἄστρων παρατηρησέως Χαλδαῖοι ἠκρίβωσαν (Chronogr. p. 207).

We need not dwell upon the back reckonings of the Chaldæans for periods of 720,000, 490,000, 470,000 years, mentioned by Cicero, Diodorus, and Pliny (Cicero, De Divin. ii, 46; Diod. ii, 31; Pliny, H. N. vii, 57), and seemingly presented by Berosus and others as the preface of Babylonian history.

It is to be noted that Ptolemy always cited the Chaldæan observations as made by “_the Chaldæans_,” never naming any individual; though in all the other observations to which he alludes, he is very scrupulous in particularizing the name of the observer. Doubtless he found the Chaldæan observations registered just in this manner; a point which illustrates what is said in the text respecting the collective character of their civilization, and the want of individual development or prominent genius.

The superiority of the Chaldæan priests to the Egyptian, as astronomical observers, is shown by the fact that Ptolemy, though living at Alexandria, never mentions the latter as astronomers, and cites no Egyptian observations while he cites thirteen Chaldæan observations in the years B. C. 721, 720, 523, 502, 491, 383, 382, 245, 237, 229: the first ten being observations of lunar eclipses; the last three, of conjunctions of planets and fixed stars (Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Ab. ii, pp. 195-199).

[555] Herodot. ii, 109.

Nor was it only the astronomical acquisitions of the priestly caste which distinguished the early Babylonians. The social condition, the fertility of the country, the dense population, and the persevering industry of the inhabitants, were not less remarkable. Respecting Nineveh,[556] once the greatest of the Assyrian cities, we have no good information, nor can we safely reason from the analogy of Babylon, inasmuch as the peculiarities of the latter were altogether determined by the Euphrates, while Nineveh was seated considerably farther north, and on the east bank of the Tigris: but Herodotus gives us valuable particulars respecting Babylon as an eye-witness, and we may judge by his account respecting its condition after much suffering from the Persian conquest, what it had been a century earlier in the days of its full splendor.

[556] The ancient Ninus or Nineveh was situated on the eastern bank of the Tigris, nearly opposite the modern town of Mousul or Mosul. Herodotus (i, 193) and Strabo (xvi, p. 737) both speak of it as being destroyed; but Tacitus (Ann. xii, 13) and Ammian. Marcell. (xviii, 7) mention it as subsisting. Its ruins had been long remarked (see Thevenot, Voyages, lib. i, ch. xi, p. 176, and Niebuhr, Reisen, vol. ii, p. 360), but have never been examined carefully until recently by Rich, Ainsworth, and others: see Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. iii, Abschn. i, s. 45, pp. 171-221.

Ktêsias, according to Diodorus (ii, 3), placed Ninus or Nineveh on the Euphrates, which we must presume to be an inadvertence,—probably of Diodorus himself, for Ktêsias would be less likely than he to confound the Euphrates and the Tigris. Compare Wesseling ad Diodor. ii, 3, and Bähr ad Ktesiæ Fragm. ii, Assyr. p. 392.

Mannert (Geographie der Gr. und Röm. part v, c. 14, pp. 439-448) disputes the identity of these ruins with the ancient city of Ninus or Nineveh, because, if this had been the fact, Xenophon and the Ten Thousand Greeks must have passed directly over them in the retreat along the eastern bank of the Tigris upward: and Xenophon, who particularly notices the deserted cities of Larissa and Mespila, says nothing of the great ruin of this once flourishing Assyrian capital. This argument once appeared to me so forcible, that I came to the same negative conclusion as Mannert, though his conjectures, as to the real site of the city, never appeared to me satisfactory. But Ritter has removed the difficulty, by showing that the ruins opposite Mosul exactly correspond to the situation of that deserted city which Xenophon calls Mespila: the difference of name in this case is not of very great importance (Ritter, _ut sup._ p. 175). Consult also Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, sect. 96, p. 612.

The situation of Nineveh here pointed out is exactly what we should expect in reference to the conquests of the Median kings: it lies in that part of Assyria bordering on Media, and in the course of the conquests which the king Kyaxarês afterwards extended farther on to the Halys. (See Appendix at the end of this chapter.)

The neighboring territory receiving but little rain,[557] owed its fertility altogether to the annual overflowing of the Euphrates, on which the labor bestowed, for the purpose of limiting, regularizing, and diffusing its supply of water, was stupendous. Embankments along the river,—artificial reservoirs in connection with it, to receive an excessive increase,—new curvilinear channels, dug for the water in places where the stream was too straight and rapid,—broad and deep canals crossing the whole space between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and feeding numerous rivulets[558] or ditches which enabled the whole breadth of land to be irrigated,—all these toilsome applications were requisite to insure due moisture for the Babylonian soil; but they were rewarded with an exuberance of produce, in the various descriptions of grain, such as Herodotus hardly dares to particularize. The country produced no trees except the date-palm, which was turned to account in many different ways, and from the fruit of which, both copious and of extraordinary size, wine as well as bread were made.[559] Moreover, Babylonia was still more barren of stone than of wood, so that buildings as well as walls were constructed almost entirely of brick, for which the earth was well adapted; while a flow of mineral bitumen, found near the town and river of Is, higher up the Euphrates, served for cement. Such persevering and systematic labor, applied for the purpose of irrigation, excites our astonishment; yet the description of what was done for defence is still more imposing. Babylon, traversed in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded by walls three hundred feet in height, seventy-five feet in thickness, and composing a square of which each side was one hundred and twenty stadia (or nearly fifteen English miles) in length: around the outside of the walls was a broad and deep moat from whence the material for the bricks composing them had been excavated; while one hundred brazen gates served for ingress and egress. Besides, there was an interior wall less thick, but still very strong; and as a still farther obstruction to invaders from the north and north-east, another high and thick wall was built at some miles from the city, across much of the space between the Euphrates and the Tigris,—called the wall of Media, seemingly a little to the north of that point where the two rivers most nearly approach to each other, and joining the Tigris on its west bank. Of the houses many were three or four stories high, and the broad and straight streets, unknown in a Greek town until the distribution of the peiræeus by Hippodamus, near the time of the Peloponnesian war, were well calculated to heighten the astonishment raised by the whole spectacle in a visitor like Herodotus. The royal palace, with its memorable terraces or hanging gardens, formed the central and commanding edifice in one half of the city,—the temple of Bêlus in the other half.

[557] Herodot. i, 193. Ἡ γῆ τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ὕεται μὲν ὀλίγῳ—while he speaks of rain falling at Thebes in Egypt as a prodigy, which never happened except just at the moment when the country was conquered by Cambysês,—οὐ γὰρ δὴ ὕεται τὰ ἄνω τῆς Αἰγύπτου τὸ παράπαν (iii, 10). It is not unimportant to notice this distinction between the _little_ rain of Babylonia, and the _no_ rain of Upper Egypt,—as a mark of measured assertion in the historian from whom so much of our knowledge of Grecian history is derived.

It chanced to rain hard during the four days which the traveller Niebuhr spent in going from the ruins of Babylon to Bagdad, at the end of November 1763 (Reisen, vol. ii, p. 292).

[558] Herodot. i, 193; Xenophon, Anab. i, 7, 15; ii, 4, 13-22.

[559] 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.

That celebrated temple, standing upon a basis of one square stadium, and inclosed in a precinct of two square stadia in dimension, was composed of eight solid towers, built one above the other, and is alleged by Strabo to have been as much as a stadium or furlong high (the height is not specified by Herodotus):[560] it was full of costly decorations, and possessed an extensive landed property. Along the banks of the river, in its passage through the city, were built spacious quays, and a bridge on stone piles, for the placing of which—as Herodotus was told—Semiramis had caused the river Euphrates to be drained off into the large side reservoir and lake constructed higher up its course.[561]

[560] Herodot. i, 178, Strabo, xiv, p. 738; Arrian, E. A. vii, 17, 7. Strabo does not say that it was a stadium in _perpendicular_ height: we may suppose that the stadium represents the entire distance in upward march from the bottom to the top. He as well as Arrian say that Xerxês destroyed both the temple of Bêlus and all the other temples at Babylon (καθεῖλεν, κατέσκαψεν, iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 4); he talks of the intention of Alexander to rebuild it, and of his directions given to level new foundations, carrying away the loose earth and ruins. This cannot be reconciled with the narrative of Herodotus, nor with the statement of Pliny (vi, 30), nor do I believe it to be true. Xerxês plundered the temple of much of its wealth and ornaments, but that he knocked down the vast building and the other Babylonian temples, is incredible. Babylon always continued one of the chief cities of the Persian empire.

[561] What is stated in the text respecting Babylon, is taken almost entirely from Herodotus: I have given briefly the most prominent points in his interesting narrative (i, 178-193), which well deserves to be read at length.

Herodotus is in fact our only original witness, speaking from his own observation and going into details, respecting the marvels of Babylon. Ktêsias, if his work had remained, would have been another original witness; but we have only a few extracts from him by Diodorus. Strabo seems not to have visited Babylon, nor can it be affirmed that Kleitarchus did so. Arrian had Aristobulus to copy, and is valuable as far as he goes; but he does not enter into many particulars respecting the magnitude of the city or its appurtenances. Berosus also, if we possessed his book, would have been an eye-witness of the state of Babylon more than a century and a half later than Herodotus, but the few fragments remaining are hardly at all descriptive (see Berosi Fragm. pp. 64-67, ed. Richter).

The magnitude of the works described by Herodotus naturally provokes suspicions of exaggeration; but there are good grounds for trusting him, in my judgment, on all points which fell under his own vision and means of verification, as distinguished from past facts, on which he could do no more than give what he heard. He had bestowed much attention on Assyria and its phenomena, as is evident from the fact that he had written (or prepared to write, if the suspicion be admissible that the work was never completed,—Fabricius, Biblioth. Græc. ii, 20, 5) a special Assyrian history, which has not reached us (Ἀσσυρίοισι λόγοισι, i, 106-184). He is very precise in the measures of which he speaks; thus having described the dimensions of the walls in “royal cubits,” he goes on immediately to tell us how much that measure differs from an ordinary cubit. He designedly suppresses a part of what he had heard respecting the produce of the Babylonian soil, from the mere apprehension of not being believed.

To these reasons for placing faith in Herodotus we may add another, not less deserving of attention. That which seems incredible in the constructions which he describes, arises simply from their enormous bulk, and the frightful quantity of human labor which must have been employed to execute them. He does not tell us, like Berosus (Fragm. p. 66), that these wonderful fortifications were completed in fifteen days,—nor like Quintus Curtius, that the length of one stadium was completed on each successive day of the year (v, 1, 26). To bring to pass all that Herodotus has described, is a mere question of time, patience, number of laborers, and cost of maintaining them,—for the materials were both close at hand and inexhaustible.

Now what would be the limit imposed upon the power and will of the old kings of Babylonia on these points? We can hardly assign that limit with so much confidence as to venture to pronounce a statement of Herodotus incredible, when he tells us something which he has seen, or verified from eye-witnesses. The Pyramids and other works in Egypt are quite sufficient to make us mistrustful of our own means of appreciation; and the great wall of China (extending for twelve hundred English miles along what was once the whole northern frontier of the Chinese empire,—from twenty to twenty-five feet high,—wide enough for six horses to run abreast, and furnished with a suitable number of gates and bastions) _contains more material than all the buildings of the British empire put together_, according to Barrow’s estimate (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 7, _t. v._; and Ideler, Ueber die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1837, ch. 3, p. 291).

Ktêsias gave the circuit of the walls of Babylon as three hundred and sixty stadia; Kleitarchus, three hundred and sixty-five stadia; Quintus Curtius, three hundred and sixty-eight stadia; and Strabo, three hundred and eighty-five stadia; all different from Herodotus, who gives four hundred and eighty stadia, a square of one hundred and twenty stadia each side. Grosskurd (ad Strabon. xvi, p. 738), Letronne, and Heeren, all presume that the smaller number must be the truth, and that Herodotus must have been misinformed; and Grosskurd further urges, that Herodotus cannot have _seen_ the walls, inasmuch as he himself tells us that Darius caused them to be razed after the second siege and reconquest (Herodot. iii, 159). But upon this we may observe: First, the expression (τὸ τεῖχος περιεῖλε) does not imply that the wall was so thoroughly and entirely razed by Darius as to leave no part standing,—still less, that the great and broad moat was in all its circuit filled up and levelled. This would have been a most laborious operation in reference to such high and bulky masses, and withal not necessary for the purpose of rendering the town defenceless; for which purpose the destruction of certain portions of the wall is sufficient. Next, Herodotus speaks distinctly of the walls and ditch as existing in his time, when he saw the place, which does not exclude the possibility that numerous breaches may have been designedly made in them, or mere openings left in the walls without any actual gates, for the purpose of obviating all idea of revolt. But, however this latter fact may be, certain it is that the great walls were either continuous, or discontinuous only to the extent of these designed breaches, when Herodotus saw them. He describes the town and its phenomena in the present tense: ~κέεται~ ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ, μέγαθος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον 120 σταδίων, ἐούσης τετραγώνου· οὗτοι στάδιοι τῆς περιόδου τῆς πόλιος ~γίνονται~ συνάπαντες 480. Τὸ μὲν νῦν μέγαθος τοσοῦτόν ~ἐστι~ τοῦ ἄστεος τοῦ Βαβυλωνίου. Ἐκεκόσμητο δὲ ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πόλισμα τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν· ταφρὸς μὲν πρῶτά μιν βαθέα τε καὶ εὔρεα καὶ πλέη ὕδατος ~περιθέει~· μετὰ δὲ, τεῖχος πεντήκοντα μὲν πηχέων βασιληΐων ~ἐὸν~ τὸ εὖρος, ὕψος δὲ, διηκοσίων πηχέων. Ὁ δὲ βασιλήϊος πηχὺς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ πήχεος μέζων τρισὶ δακτυλίοισι (c. 178). Again (c. 181),—Τοῦτο μὲν δὴ τὸ τεῖχος θώρηξ ~ἐστί~· ἕτερον δὲ ἔσωθεν τεῖχος ~περιθεῖ~, οὐ πολλῷ τέῳ ἀσθενέστερον τοῦ ἑτέρου τείχους, στεινότερον δέ. Then he describes the temple of Zeus Bêlus, with its vast dimensions,—καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ τοῦτο ἔτι ἐὸν, δύο σταδίων πάντη, ἐὸν τετράγωνον,—in the language of one who had himself gone up to the top of it. After having mentioned the striking present phenomena of the temple, he specifies a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high, which the Chaldæans told him had once been there, but which he did not see, and he carefully marks the distinction in his language,—ἦν δὲ ἐν τῷ τεμένεϊ τούτῳ ἔτι τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον καὶ ἀνδριὰς δυώδεκα πήχεων, χρύσεος στέρεος. Ἐγὼ μέν μιν οὐκ εἶδον· τὰ δὲ λέγεται ὑπὸ Χαλδαίων, ταῦτα λέγω (c. 183).

The argument, therefore, by which Grosskurd justifies the rejection of the statement of Herodotus is not to be reconciled with the language of the historian: Herodotus certainly saw both the walls and the ditch. Ktêsias saw them too, and his statement of the circuit, as three hundred and sixty stadia, stands opposed to that of four hundred and eighty stadia, which appears in Herodotus. But the authority of Herodotus is, in my judgment, so much superior to that of Ktêsias, that I accept the larger figure as more worthy of credit than the smaller. Sixty English miles of circuit is, doubtless, a wonder, but forty-five miles in circuit is a wonder also: granting means and will to execute the lesser of these two, the Babylonian kings can hardly be supposed inadequate to the greater.

To me the height of these artificial mountains, called _walls_, appears even more astonishing than their length or breadth. Yet it is curious that on this point the two eye-witnesses, Herodotus and Ktêsias, both agree, with only the difference between royal cubits and common cubits. Herodotus states the height at two hundred royal cubits: Ktêsias, at fifty fathoms, which are equal to two hundred common cubits (Diod. ii, 7),—τὸ δὲ ὕψος, ὡς μὲν Κτησίας φησὶ, πεντήκοντα ὀργυιῶν, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι τῶν νεωτώρων ἔγραψαν, πηχῶν πεντήκοντα. Olearius (ad Philostratum Vit. Apollon. Tyan. i, 25) shows plausible reason for believing that the more recent writers (νεώτεροι) cut down the dimensions stated by Ktêsias simply because they thought such a vast height incredible. The difference between the royal cubit and the common cubit, as Herodotus on this occasion informs us, was three digits in favor of the former; his two hundred royal cubits are thus equal to three hundred and thirty-seven feet eight inches: Ktêsias has not attended to the difference between royal cubits and common cubits, and his estimate, therefore, is lower than that of Herodotus by thirty-seven feet eight inches.

On the whole, I cannot think that we are justified, either by the authority of such counter-testimony as can be produced, or by the intrinsic wonder of the case, in rejecting the dimensions of the walls of Babylon as given by Herodotus.

Quintus Curtius states that a large proportion of the inclosed space was not occupied by dwellings, but sown and planted (v, 1, 26: compare Diodor. ii, 9).

Besides this great town of Babylon itself, there were throughout the neighborhood, between the canals which united the Euphrates and the Tigris, many rich and populous villages, while Borsippa and other considerable towns were situated lower down on the Euphrates itself. And the industry, agricultural as well as manufacturing, of the collective population, was not less persevering than productive: their linen, cotton, and woollen fabrics, and their richly ornamented carpets, were celebrated throughout all the Eastern regions. Their cotton was brought in part from islands in the Persian gulf, while the flocks of sheep tended by the Arabian nomads supplied them with wool finer even than that of Milêtus or Tarentum. Besides the Chaldæan order of priests, there seem to have been among them certain other tribes with peculiar hereditary customs: thus there were three tribes, probably near the mouth of the river, who restricted themselves to the eating of fish alone; but we have no evidences of a military caste (like that in Egypt) nor any other hereditary profession.

In order to present any conception of what Assyria was, in the early days of Grecian history, and during the two centuries preceding the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 536 B. C., we unfortunately have no witness earlier than Herodotus, who did not see Babylon until near a century after that event,—about seventy years after its still more disastrous revolt and second subjugation by Darius, Babylonia had become one of the twenty satrapies of the Persian empire, and besides paying a larger regular tribute than any of the other nineteen, supplied from its exuberant soil provision for the Great King and his countless host of attendants during one-third part of the year.[562] Yet it was then in a state of comparative degradation, having had its immense walls breached by Darius, and having afterwards undergone the ill usage of Xerxês, who, since he stripped its temples, and especially the venerated temple of Bêlus, of some of their richest ornaments, would probably be still more reckless in his mode of dealing with the civil edifices.[563] If in spite of such inflictions, and in spite of that manifest evidence of poverty and suffering in the people which Herodotus expressly notices, it continued to be what he describes, still counted as almost the chief city of the Persian empire, both in the time of the younger Cyrus and in that of Alexander,[564]—we may judge what it must once have been, without either foreign satrap or foreign tribute,[565] under its Assyrian kings and Chaldæan priests, during the last of the two centuries which intervened between the era of Nabonassar and the capture of the city by Cyrus the Great. Though several of the kings, during the first of these two centuries, had contributed much to the great works of Babylon, yet it was during the second century of the two, after the capture of Nineveh by the Medes, and under Nebuchadnezzar and Nitôkris, that the kings attained the maximum of their power, and the city its greatest enlargement. It was Nebuchadnezzar who constructed the seaport Terêdon, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and who probably excavated the long ship canal of near four hundred miles, which joined it,—which was perhaps formed partly from a natural western branch of the Euphrates.[566] The brother of the poet Alkæus,—Antimenidas, who served in the Babylonian army, and distinguished himself by his personal valor (600-580 B. C.),—would have seen it in its full glory:[567] he is the earliest Greek of whom we hear individually in connection with the Babylonians. It marks[568] strikingly the contrast between the Persian kings and the Babylonian kings, on whose ruin they rose, that while the latter incurred immense expense to facilitate the communication between Babylon and the sea, the former artificially impeded the lower course of the Tigris, in order that their residence at Susa might be out of the reach of assailants.

[562] Herodot. i, 196.

[563] Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 3; Quint. Curtius, iii, 3, 16.

[564] Xenoph. Anab. i, 4, 11; Arrian. Exp. Al. iii. 16, 3. καὶ ἅμα τοῦ πολέμου τὸ ἆθλον ἡ Βαβυλῶν καὶ τὰ Σοῦσα ἐφαίνετο.

[565] See the statement of the large receipts of the satrap Tritantæchmes and his immense establishment of horses and Indian dogs (Herodot. i 192).

[566] There is a valuable examination of the lower course of the Euphrates, with the changes which it has undergone, in Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii. Abtheil. iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 29, pp. 45-49, and the passage from Abydenus in the latter page.

For the distance between Terêdon or Diridôtis, at the mouth of the Euphrates (which remained separate from that of the Tigris until the first century of the Christian era), to Babylon, see Strabo, ii, p. 80; xvi, p. 739.

It is important to keep in mind the warning given by Ritter, that none of the maps of the course of the river Euphrates, prepared previously to the publication of Colonel Chesney’s expedition in 1836, are to be trusted. That expedition gave the first complete and accurate survey of the course of the river, and led to the detection of many mistakes previously committed by Mannert, Reichard, and other able geographers and chartographers. To the immense mass of information contained in Ritter’s comprehensive and laborious work, is to be added the farther merit, that he is always careful in pointing out where the geographical data are insufficient and fall short of certainty. See West-Asien, B. iii, Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 41, p 959.

[567] Strabo, xiii, p. 617, with the mutilated fragment of Alkæus, which O Müller has so ingeniously corrected (Rhenisch. Museum, i, 4, p. 287).

[568] Strabo, xvi, p. 740.

That which strikes us most, and which must have struck the first Grecian visitors much more, both in Assyria and Egypt, is the unbounded command of naked human strength possessed by these early kings, and the effect of mere mass and indefatigable perseverance, unaided either by theory or by artifice, in the accomplishment of gigantic results.[569] In Assyria, the results were in great part exaggerations of enterprises in themselves useful to the people for irrigation and defence: religious worship was ministered to in the like manner, as well as the personal fancies and pomp of their kings: while in Egypt the latter class predominates more over the former. We scarcely trace in either of them the higher sentiment of art, which owes its first marked development to Grecian susceptibility and genius. But the human mind is in every stage of its progress, and most of all in its rude and unreflecting period, strongly impressed by visible and tangible magnitude, and awe-struck by the evidences of great power. To this feeling, for what exceeded the demands of practical convenience and security, the wonders both in Egypt and Assyria chiefly appealed; while the execution of such colossal works demonstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to the regal and priestly sway,—contrasting forcibly with the small autonomous communities of Greece and western Europe, wherein the will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic and uncontrolled. The acquisition of habits of regular industry, so foreign to the natural temper of man, was brought about in Egypt and Assyria, in China and Hindostan, before it had acquired any footing in Europe; but it was purchased either by prostrate obedience to a despotic rule, or by imprisonment within the chain of a consecrated institution of caste. Even during the Homeric period of Greece, these countries had attained a certain civilization in mass, without the acquisition of any high mental qualities or the development of any individual genius: the religious and political sanction, sometimes combined and sometimes separate, determined for every one his mode of life, his creed, his duties, and his place in society, without leaving any scope for the will or reason of the agent himself. Now the Phenicians and Carthaginians manifest a degree of individual impulse and energy which puts them greatly above this type of civilization, though in their tastes, social feelings, and religion, they are still Asiatic. And even the Babylonian community, though their Chaldæan priests are the parallel of the Egyptian priests, with a less measure of ascendency, combine with their industrial aptitude and constancy of purpose something of that strenuous ferocity of character which marks so many people of the Semitic race,—Jews, Phenicians, and Carthaginians. These Semitic people stand distinguished as well from the Egyptian life,—enslaved by childish caprices and antipathies, and by endless frivolities of ceremonial detail,—as from the flexible, many-sided, and self-organizing Greek; not only capable of opening both for himself and for the human race the highest walks of intellect, and the full creative agency of art, but also gentler by far in his private sympathies and dealings than his contemporaries on the Euphrates, the Jordan, or the Nile,—for we are not of course to compare him with the exigencies of western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

[569] Diodor. (i. 31) states this point justly with regard to the ancient kings of Egypt—ἔργα μεγάλα καὶ θαυμαστὰ διὰ ~τὰς πολυχειρίας~ κατασκευάσαντας, ἀθάνατα τῆς ἑαυτῶν δόξες καταλιπεῖν ὑπομνήματα.

Both in Babylonia and in Egypt, the vast monuments, embankments, and canals, executed by collective industry, appeared the more remarkable to an ancient traveller by contrast with the desert regions and predatory tribes immediately surrounding them. West of the Euphrates, the sands of Arabia extended northward, with little interruption, to the latitude of the gulf of Issus; they even covered the greater part of Mesopotamia,[570] or the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris, beginning a few days’ journey northward of the wall called the wall of Media above mentioned, which—extending westward from the Tigris to one of the canals joining the Euphrates—had been erected to protect Babylon, against the incursion of the Medes.[571] Eastward of the Tigris again, along the range of Mount Zagros, but at no great distance from the river, were found the Elymæi, Kossæi, Uxii, Parætakêni, etc.,—tribes which, to use the expression of Strabo,[572] “as inhabiting a poor country, were under the necessity of living by the plunder of their neighbors.” Such rude bands of depredators on the one side, and such wide tracts of sand on the two others, without vegetation or water, contrasted powerfully with the industry and productiveness of Babylonia. Babylon itself is to be considered, not as one continuous city, but as a city together with its surrounding district inclosed within immense walls, the height and thickness of which were in themselves a sufficient defence, so that the place was assailable only at its gates. In case of need, it would serve as shelter for the persons and property of the village inhabitants in Babylonia; and we shall see hereafter how useful under trying circumstances such a resource was, when we come to review the invasions of Attica by the Peloponnesians, and the mischiefs occasioned by a temporary crowd pouring in from the country, so as to overcharge the intra-mural accommodations of Athens. Spacious as Babylon was, however, it is affirmed by Strabo that Ninus or Nineveh was considerably larger.

[570] See the description of this desert in Xenoph. Anab. i, 5, 1-8.

[571] The Ten Thousand Greeks passed from the outside to the inside of the wall of Media: it was one hundred feet high, twenty feet wide, and was reported to them as extending twenty parasangs or six hundred stadia (= seventy miles) in length (Xenoph. Anab. ii, 4, 12). Eratosthenês called it τὸ Σεμιράμιδος διατείχισμα (Strabo, ii, p. 80): it was seemingly about twenty-five miles north of Bagdad.

There is some confusion about the wall of Media: Mannert (Geogr. der G. und R. v. 2, p. 280) and Forbiger also (Alte Geogr. sect. 97, p. 616, note 94) appear to have confounded the ditch dug by special order of Artaxerxês to oppose the march of the younger Cyrus, with the Nahar-Malcha or Royal canal between the Tigris and the Euphrates: see Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 15.

It is singular that Herodotus makes no mention of the wall of Media, though his subject (i, 185) naturally conducts him to it: he seems to have sailed down the Euphrates to Babylon, and must, therefore, have seen it, if it had really extended to the Euphrates, as some authors have imagined. Probably, however, it was not kept up with any care, even in his time, seeing that its original usefulness was at an end, after the whole of Asia, from the Euxine to the Persian gulf, became subject to the Persians.

[572] Strabo, xvi, p. 744.

APPENDIX.

Since the first edition of these volumes, the interesting work of Mr. Layard,—“Nineveh and its Remains,” together with his illustrative Drawings,—“The Monuments of Nineveh,”—have been published. And through his unremitting valuable exertions in surmounting all the difficulties connected with excavations on the spot, the British Museum has been enriched with a valuable collection of real Assyrian sculptures and other monuments. A number of similar relics of Assyrian antiquity, obtained by M. Botta and others, have also been deposited in the museum of the Louvre at Paris.

In respect to Assyrian art, indeed to the history of art in general, a new world has thus been opened, which promises to be fruitful of instruction especially when we consider that the ground out of which the recent acquisitions have been obtained, has been yet most imperfectly examined, and may be expected to yield a much ampler harvest hereafter, assuming circumstances tolerably favorable to investigation. The sculptures to which we are now introduced, with all their remarkable peculiarities of style and idea, must undoubtedly date from the eighth or seventh century B. C., at the latest,—and may be much earlier. The style which they display forms a parallel and subject of comparison, though in many points extremely different, to that of early Egypt,—at a time when the ideal combinations of the Greeks were, as far as we know, embodied only in epic and lyric poetry.

But in respect to early Assyrian history, we have yet to find out whether much new information can be safely deduced from these interesting monuments. The cuneiform inscriptions now brought to light are indeed very numerous: and if they can be deciphered, on rational and trustworthy principles, we can hardly fail to acquire more or less of positive knowledge respecting a period now plunged in total darkness. But from the monuments of art alone, it would be unsafe to draw historical inferences. For example, when we find sculptures representing a king taking a city by assault, or receiving captives brought to him, etc., we are not to conclude that this commemorates any real and positive conquest recently made by the Assyrians. Our knowledge of the subjects of Greek sculpture on temples is quite sufficient to make us disallow any such inference, unless there be some corroborative proof. Some means must first be discovered, of discriminating historical from mythical subjects: a distinction which I here notice, the rather, because Mr. Layard shows occasional tendency to overlook it in his interesting remarks and explanations: see, especially, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 409.

From the rich and abundant discoveries made at Nimroud, combined with those at Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, Mr. Layard is inclined to comprehend all these three within the circuit of ancient Nineveh; admitting for that circuit the prodigious space alleged by Diodorus out of Ktêsias, four hundred and eighty stadia or near sixty English miles. (See Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, ch. ii, pp. 242-253.) Mr. Layard considers that the north-west portion of Nimroud exhibits monuments more ancient, and at the same time better in style and execution, than the south-west portion,—or than Kouyunjik and Khorsabad (vol. ii, ch. i, p. 204; ch. iii, p. 305). If this hypothesis, as to the ground covered by Nineveh, be correct, probably future excavations will confirm it—or, if incorrect, refute it. But I do not at all reject the supposition on the simple ground of excessive magnitude: on the contrary, I should at once believe the statement, if it were reported by Herodotus after a visit to the spot, like the magnitude of Babylon. The testimony of Ktêsias is, indeed, very inferior in value to that of Herodotus: yet it ought hardly to be outweighed by the supposed improbability of so great a walled space, when we consider how little we know where to set bounds to the power of the Assyrian kings in respect to command of human labor for any process merely simple and toilsome, with materials both near and inexhaustible. Not to mention the great wall of China, we have only to look at the Picts Wall, and other walls built by the Romans in Britain, to satisfy ourselves that a great length of fortification, under circumstances much less favorable than the position of the ancient Assyrian kings, is noway incredible in itself. Though the walls of Nineveh and Babylon were much _larger_ than those of Paris as it now stands, yet when we compare the two not merely in size, but in respect of costliness, elaboration, and contrivance, the latter will be found to represent an infinitely greater _amount of work_.

Larissa and Mespila, those deserted towns and walls which Xenophon saw in the retreat of the Ten Thousand (Anabas. iii, 4, 6-10), coincide in point of distance and situation with Nimroud and Kouyunjik, according to Mr. Layard’s remark. Nor is his supposition improbable, that both of them were formed by the Medes out of the ruins of the conquered city of Nineveh. Neither of them singly seems at all adequate to the reputation of that ancient city, or rather walled circuit. According to the account of Herodotus, Phraortes the second Median king had attacked Nineveh, but had been himself slain in the attempt, and lost nearly all his army. It was partly to revenge this disgrace that Kyaxarês, son of Phraortes assailed Nineveh (Herod. i, 102-103): we may thus see a special reason, in addition to his own violence of temper (i, 73), why he destroyed the city after having taken it (Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, i, 178). It is easy to conceive that this vast walled space may have been broken up and converted into two Median towns, both on the Tigris. In the subsequent change from Median to Persian dominion, these towns also became depopulated, as far as the strange tales which Xenophon heard in his retreat can be trusted. The interposition of these two Median towns doubtless contributed, for the time, to put out of sight the traditions respecting the old Ninus which had before stood upon their site. But these traditions were never extinct, and a new town bearing the old name of Ninus must have subsequently arisen on the spot. This second Ninus is recognized by Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Ammianus, not only as existing, but as pretending to uninterrupted continuity of succession from the ancient “caput Assyriæ.”

Mr. Layard remarks on the facility with which edifices, such as those in Assyria, built of sunburnt bricks, perish when neglected, and crumble away into earth, leaving little or no trace.