Kitabı oku: «The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6)», sayfa 20

Jerusalem fell nineteen years after the battle of Karchemish. Step by step Nebuchadnezzar had overcome Syria. First Arpad, Hamath and Damascus had succumbed, then the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. After Judah had recognised his supremacy in the year 600 B.C., the rebellion on which Jehoiakim ventured three years afterwards had brought upon that country a severe punishment, and a condition of greater dependence. Four years afterwards, 593 B.C., the cities of the Phenicians were reduced except Tyre. The second rebellion of Judah was followed by the annihilation of the country. The prophets of the Jews looked forward to the war of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt – to the punishment for the campaign which Hophrah had undertaken against Syria, and which had compelled Nebuchadnezzar to raise the siege of Jerusalem. Ezekiel, who was among the Jews carried away with Jechoniah in 597 B.C., and with part of them had received a habitation on the Chaboras beyond the Euphrates, proclaimed the destruction and fall of Egypt. "Egypt," he says, "has been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they took hold of thee by the hand then thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, thou didst break and madest their loins to totter. Thou wast as a dragon in the seas, and camest forth in thy rivers. The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon thee. By the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitudes to fall: and I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountain; I will destroy all the beasts thereof from beside the great waters; neither shall the foot of man, nor the hoof of beasts, trouble them any more. Go down to them that are sunk in the pit, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised."⁶⁷² The same fortune was announced to the Pharaoh Hophrah and his land by Jeremiah among the emigrants at Tachpanhes⁶⁷³ on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile: "Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophrah, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life, as I gave Zedekiah, king of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, his enemy, that sought his life. Behold, I will send and fetch Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant. At the entrance of Pharaoh's house, in Tachpanhes, he will spread out his royal pavilion, and he will come and smite the land of Egypt, and deliver to death such as are for death, and to captivity such as are for captivity, and to the sword such as are for the sword. And I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive, and he shall break the pillars of Bethshemesh (the obelisks of Heliopolis), and the houses of the gods of Egypt shall he burn with fire."⁶⁷⁴

Nebuchadnezzar did not fulfil these expectations. He was not a conqueror who sought to press on beyond all bounds, and extend his power further and further. On the contrary, he sought to keep his empire within the natural boundaries, and not go beyond the desert which separated him from Egypt. The subjugation of Syria was not complete so long as Tyre did not obey his authority. He directed his arms not against Hophrah but against Tyre. It was difficult to reach the island city without a fleet. Nevertheless Ezekiel looked forward to the speedy success of the Babylonians, and the immediate fall of the great trading city. Tyre will fall because she rejoiced over the fall of Jerusalem, because she cried: "I shall be full, since thou art desolate."⁶⁷⁵ He describes in a lively manner how Nebuchadnezzar will set up his battering-rams against the walls of Tyre; how he will throw down their towers with his engines of war; will cast up a trench against them, and raise the shield upon them.⁶⁷⁶ He sees the island already changed into a naked rock for spreading out nets.⁶⁷⁷ These prophecies also were not fulfilled in their whole extent. The siege, after the capture of the old city, was no more than a blockade from the mainland, a cutting off of all intercourse of the city towards the coast, such as had once before been carried on in the time of Shalmanesar IV. and Assurbanipal of Assyria (pp. 83, 166), and now as then it was only feebly sustained from the sea by the ships which the subject neighbour-harbours had to furnish. Nebuchadnezzar's troops are said to have remained thirteen years before Tyre. The blockade was brought to an end, as it seems, in the year 573 B.C., by an arrangement in which the Tyrians recognised the supremacy of the king of Babylon. "A heavy service," says the prophet Ezekiel, "has Nebuchadnezzar compelled his army to perform against Tyre. Every head is bald, and every shoulder peeled, and there is no wages in his army for Tyre." The Tyrians, as it seems, allowed Nebuchadnezzar to elect their king. Ethbaal, king of Tyre, resigned the throne, and Nebuchadnezzar set up Baal in his place.⁶⁷⁸

After repeated struggles Nebuchadnezzar had driven the Egyptians out of Syria, had repulsed their attempts to support the rebellions of the Syrians. In addition to the tribes of the Arabs between Libanus and Antilibanus he had brought the states and cities of the Syrians to obedience; he had united under his supremacy the Semitic tribes from the Tigris to the Syrian coast, from the Persian to the Arabian Gulf. Never had the ancient kingdom of Babylon won such power, and taken up such a position. Yet this wide extent of dominion scarcely bore comparison with the empire of the Medes, in concert with which Babylonia had overthrown the Assyrians. But the territory of Babylon between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, as compared with the long stretch of the Median Empire, which reached from the Halys to the middle, and to the southern edge of the table-land of Iran, was better rounded off, and the population of Babylonia was more homogeneous. It belonged to one tribe only. These advantages, combined with the profuse fertility and the highly-developed industrial activity of the native land, with the trade and maritime resources of the Phenician cities, could compensate to Babylonia in intensive power the advantage which Media had in extent. For the present the courts of Babylon, Media, and Lydia, were peacefully connected by the ties of relationship.

CHAPTER XV.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Assyria had become known to the Greeks about the time when Tiglath Pilesar II. had reduced Syria to submission, and the cities of the Phenicians were subject to the kings of Asshur —i. e. about the middle of the eighth century B.C. Hence for them the name Assyrians denoted the whole population of Asia from the Syrian coast to the Tigris, and the range of the Zagrus: "Syrians" is merely an abbreviated form of the name "Assyrians." In this sense Herodotus says: "After the fall of Nineveh Babylon was the chief city of the Assyrians."⁶⁷⁹ As a fact Nebuchadnezzar had united under his dominion the whole of the Semitic tribes on both sides of the Syrian desert. The stubborn resistance of the Phenicians and Hebrews had been broken by repeated campaigns; at least, after the subjugation of Tyre, we hear no more of rebellion by a Syrian tribe against Babylonia.

Nebuchadnezzar was able to complete the work which his father Nabopolassar had commenced by liberating Babylon from Assyria after two centuries of supremacy and one century of dominion, and had secured by it the annihilation of Assyria. The second king of this name on the throne of Babylon – Nebuchadnezzar I. had fought against Assyria with some success in the first half of the 12th century B.C. (II. 37) – he was the true founder of the new kingdom. Berosus is fully justified in saying of him, that he surpassed the achievements of all the earlier kings of the Chaldæans, though the addition that he ruled over Egypt, as well Phœnicia, Syria, and Arabia, is to be ascribed to the vainglory of the Babylonian.⁶⁸⁰ Nebuchadnezzar was indeed a prince of extraordinary gifts. He proved himself a brave warrior in the great victory which he gained over the Egyptians at Karchemish, and in the subsequent campaigns against the Arabians, Syrians, and Egyptians. The fame of his battles reached the Greeks: we find Hellenic nobles, as Antimenidas of Lesbos, the brother of the poet Alcæus, in his army.⁶⁸¹ At Karchemish and in the south of Judah these had an opportunity of measuring themselves against their countrymen in the service of Necho and Hophrah. But Nebuchadnezzar did not allow the successes of his arms to tempt him beyond the limits which he had fixed for himself. He was not a conqueror in the Oriental sense, pressing onward to unlimited dominion. With a clear sense of his power, he placed bounds on his campaigns: as we saw, he refrained from attacking Egypt. His chief care was the secure foundation and continuance of his kingdom, and he clearly recognised the conditions which would promote this aim. The object, which he thus set before himself, he sought to realise with wisdom, with unwearied effort, and the greatest perseverance. He did much to promote the welfare of his kingdom; to encourage agriculture and trade; to improve the communications of Babylon by land and sea. He secured the strongest protection for his land and metropolis by a magnificent and well-considered system of fortifications. He must be numbered among the foremost princes of the ancient East. An engraved stone in the Berlin Museum presents us with a head; the cuneiform letters round it tell us: "To Merodach Nabukudurussur, king of Babylon: in his life he prepared it."⁶⁸² It is a portrait in profile, quite different from the only other relief of a Babylonian king which has come down to us (I. 302); quite different also from the delineations of the Assyrian kings. Instead of the tall kidaris, and the long curled hair and beard, this head wears a closing helmet with a low ridge. The hair can be seen beneath it, but it does not fall on the neck: the face is smooth and beardless. The lines are round and full, the neck strong. Under the helmet protrudes the forehead, which slightly recedes; the brows are closely knit; there is a look of authority in the eye. The nose is straight and well-formed: the chin is short and round, and slightly elevated. It is the picture of a strong and even imperious will, a firm self-conscious power.

Babylon must have suffered severely in the repeated campaigns of Tiglath Pilesar II., Sargon, Sennacherib, and Assurbanipal, in the struggle for the possession of the Chaldæan districts, for Bit Yakin and Babylon. Babylon was besieged and taken by Sennacherib, and severely punished. The restorations of Esarhaddon were no doubt again destroyed at the second capture of the city by Assurbanipal. How far Nabopolassar succeeded in securing not Babylon only and the larger cities, but the country also from devastation and plunder by the Sacæ, we do not know. In any case there must everywhere have been deep and severe wounds in need of healing.

We saw that the produce of the agriculture of Babylon, the fruit of the field, depended on the irrigation, the system of canals, and the regulation of the overflow of the Euphrates. Nebuchadnezzar must have commenced his work by putting in order the dams of the Euphrates, which it was no easy task to keep up, by providing with water-courses or cleaning out the canals which had become dry or blocked up.⁶⁸³ The great canals of the old kings were still in existence, the canal of Hammurabi, the Narsares, the Pallakopas, and the connecting canals between the Euphrates and Tigris above Babylon.⁶⁸⁴ Nebuchadnezzar must have taken measures for their restoration. He increased the number of the connections between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and made them more useful by cutting a new canal from the Euphrates to the Tigris, of sufficient dimensions to carry the largest vessels. This was the Nahr Malka, i. e. the king's trench. Herodotus calls it the largest of the Babylonian canals. According to Xenophon's statement there were four canals connecting the Euphrates and the Tigris, one hundred feet in breadth, and deep enough to carry even corn ships. They were bridged over, and about four miles from each other. From these were derived the canals of irrigation, first the large, then the small, and lastly runnels like those in Greece for watering the fields of millet. The larger canals of irrigation were so deep that the Greeks with Clearchus could not cross them without bridges; and for the construction of these the palms which shadowed the banks of the canals were felled. Clearchus and Xenophon crossed the two northernmost of the connecting canals in order to come from the Median wall to Sittace on the Tigris. The first they crossed by the permanent bridge, the second by a bridge of boats supported by seven merchantmen. The lining of these canals was constructed of bricks, united with asphalt-mortar. There still exist four canals connecting the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Saklawiye is followed by the Nahr Sersar; further to the south is the Nahr Malka, which leaves the eastern bank of the Euphrates below Feludsha, in order to reach the Tigris at the point marked by the ruins of Seleucia – this is the great canal constructed by Nebuchadnezzar: lastly, immediately above Babylon, is the Nahr Kutha, named after the city of Kutha. Thus Nebuchadnezzar completed the old canal system of Babylon; he facilitated the communication between the two rivers in the upper part of the land, and increased the irrigation. He also gave attention to the lower land: between the Narsares and the Pallakopas, which carry away the overflow of the water of the Euphrates, below Babylon, he made trenches in order to drain the marsh, and he caused dams to be erected on the sea-coast in order to keep out the inundations of the sea.⁶⁸⁵

In order to avoid destructive floods at the time of the yearly inundation, in order to bring about a graduated and regular rise of the Euphrates, in order to receive the overflow in the years when the inundation was higher, and apply the water thus stored in the years of drought, – in a word, in order to have the water of the Euphrates completely under control, Nebuchadnezzar took in hand, and completed, one of the most magnificent of hydraulic works. Above Babylon, and the four canals which connect the Euphrates with the Tigris on the northern border of Babylonia proper, lay the ancient city of Sippara (I. 257). Near this, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, was excavated a vast basin, not inferior to the artificial lake of Amenemha. The circuit of this basin is said to have been 420 stades (i. e. 50 miles); the depth reached 35 feet. The trenches and dams, which formed this basin, were cased, on the inclines, with masonry, and the excavated earth was used for the embankment of the Euphrates. According to the excerpt in Abydenus, Berosus allowed a circuit of 40 parasangs, i. e. 150 miles, for this basin, with a depth of 20 fathoms, and added that the sluices, which opened and shut of themselves, according to the level of the water in the basin of the Euphrates, irrigated the level land. If the circuit of the basin was really 50 miles, we must suppose that here, as in the lake of Amenemha, a low-lying strip of land was changed by embankment into a basin or wide reservoir.⁶⁸⁶ With this great undertaking were connected other hydraulic works erected at Ardericca. At this place Nebuchadnezzar caused a new bed to be excavated for the Euphrates, with sharp curves, either to lessen the force of the current, and make navigation up the current possible, or, which is more probable, because it was necessary to moderate the flow of the river in order to conduct the inundation into the basin at Sippara.⁶⁸⁷ By means of this basin at Sippara Nebuchadnezzar really brought the Euphrates into his power. Even though the excess of the water of the stream might be too much for its large dimensions in any single year, the canals leading to the Tigris provided the means of carrying off the excess into that river, and at the same time it was possible owing to the connections to counteract by means of the Euphrates the inequality of the water in the lower Tigris.

The regulation of the inundation, of the bed and level of the Euphrates, and of the level of the Tigris, was not only an assistance to agriculture, but to trade also, inasmuch as it facilitated the navigation in both streams. In this way trade received considerable support, and Nebuchadnezzar also paid attention to it beyond the borders of the Babylonian land. To his time apparently belongs the foundation of the Babylonian colony of Gerrha on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. For the trade of Babylonia with South Arabia and the products of India which came to South Arabia (I. 305), it was important to avoid the transport by land and the middle trade of the Arabians, and to obtain those wares by direct marine trade with Babylonia. The building of the harbour city of Teredon at the mouth of the Euphrates, 400 miles below Babylon, which became the chief centre of the trade in Arabian spices, is, as we are definitely informed, the work of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Dedanites in whose land lay the colony of Gerrha (the modern Chatif) opposite the Bahrain islands, at a distance of 300 miles from Teredon, had been subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar (p. 329). The Gerrhæans brought the products and the incense of Arabia on board ship to Babylon; from hence it was sent up the river to Thapsacus, and from thence carried by land in every direction.⁶⁸⁸ In this way the lucrative trade with South Arabia by the sea-route of the Persian Gulf must have been gained for Babylon. Hence it appears that Nebuchadnezzar built Teredon and founded Gerrha with the same object with which the Phenicians – in order to avoid the middle trade of the Arabians, and the difficulties of the caravan trade – arranged their navigation from Elath to South Arabia, in the time of Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and Uzziah of Judah. The Babylonians were already or subsequently became acquainted with the navigation on the Persian Gulf. Their voyages extended to the bold headland of the mountains of Maketa (Cape Mussendom), where it was possible to enter into direct communication with the Indians.⁶⁸⁹ At a later time we hear only of the Gerrhæans as middle-men in the trade with the Sabæans, while in the Hebrew Scriptures the Rhegmæans and Dedanites carry on trade with Sabæa. The Gerrhæans carried the products of Arabia to Babylon by sea; then they passed not merely up the Euphrates, but also across the desert in a slanting direction to Syria. It must have been one of the most beneficial results of the hydraulic works of Nebuchadnezzar that the Euphrates could be navigated up the stream; and triremes could advance as far as Thipsach. Trade was greatly facilitated by the fact that the wares of India and Arabia could not only be brought by water to Babylon, but could also be conveyed along with the products of Babylonian industry to that city where the most crowded caravan routes from Cilicia, Syria, and Phœnicia, touched the Euphrates,⁶⁹⁰ while, on the other hand, the wares brought along these routes from Syria could be carried in return to Babylon. By the Nahr Malka the ships of heaviest burden could then pass from the Euphrates into the Tigris. If the cities of the Phenicians lost their sea trade on the Persian Gulf by their dependence on Babylon – in case the Egyptians closed that gulf to the subjects of Nebuchadnezzar – they were compensated by the fact that they could obtain the products of South Arabia, not only by the caravan route by Elath, but also in Babylon itself. Moreover, the Arabian tribes on the Euphrates and in the Syrian desert, the Kedarites and their neighbours, were subject to Nebuchadnezzar, and the construction of the roads which led from Babylon through the desert to the West, to Sela and Elath, which provided a far shorter means of connection with Syria than the old caravan routes by Damascus and Tadmor to Thipsach, and by Riblah and Hamath to Karchemish, must certainly be ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar.⁶⁹¹

Under the protection of the common head the caravans of the Phenicians travelled in peace along secure roads from the Syrian Sea to the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, and the east coast of the Red Sea. The impulse which the trade thereby acquired might cause the supremacy of Nebuchadnezzar to appear to the Phenician cities not only tolerable, but advantageous. The easier and more secure connection with Babylon might, at any rate, teach them to forget in part the loss which their market had suffered by the fall of Nineveh. The increased productiveness of agriculture, the livelier trade, and consequent growth of industry, could not but raise the power and resources of the Babylonian kingdom. The more lively the intercourse between the two great halves of the kingdom separated by the desert, the more passable the desert became, the easier was it for troops to march from Babylon to Gaza, from Harran to Hamath. And if the canals of the Babylonian plain carried the ships of the Euphrates to the Tigris, and left no field without irrigation, they at the same time largely increased the means of defence in the native land.

The numerous invasions which Babylonia had suffered from the Assyrians must have been held in lively recollection, and the founder of the new kingdom could not omit to bestow his earnest attention on the mode of preventing such dangers for the future. They were only possible on the side of Media. So far as the difference of force in comparison with Media was not removed by the better frontier, the more homogeneous population, and the greater productive power in Babylonia, it was necessary to attempt to remove it by the erection of fortresses in the land. As the attacks of the Assyrians had taken place from the North, the attacks of the Medes were also to be expected from that quarter. Mesopotamia might, in case of necessity, be abandoned, if the native land were made secure. Babylonia had excellent bulwarks on the East and West in the Euphrates and the Tigris; in the North the line of canals, especially the new and broad canal, Nahr Malka, formed a similar protection. The basin of Sippara was not merely constructed with a view to the cultivation of the soil and the navigation; it was at the same time calculated that the supply of water contained in it was sufficient to change the most northern of these canals into deep watercourses. The sluices were guarded by the fortress of Sippara.⁶⁹² How destructive this basin would one day be to his metropolis, how it would render vain the fruit of all his labours, Nebuchadnezzar never dreamed. If every hostile power in the East and West had to cross a wide river in the face of the Babylonian army, the two rivers from Sippara downwards could now be filled by opening the great reservoir and by closing the sluices of the Pallakopas in such a manner that it became more difficult than ever to cross them. The same was the case with the canals. But the difficulties here were not so great, and they did not satisfy Nebuchadnezzar. In order to strengthen the defence of the northern border, in order to protect the basin of Sippara, on which depended the filling of the upper canals and the feeding of the lower course of both streams, to make more secure the fertile part of Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar built a strong wall, extending from the Euphrates to the Tigris, above the four canals and the fortified Sippara. This fortification the Greeks call "the Median wall." It was, in fact, intended to meet the attacks of the Medes. Had Nebuchadnezzar chosen for the line of the wall the point at which the two rivers most nearly approach each other, the length of it would have been little more than 25 miles; but as Sippara and all the land of the canals had to be protected, the wall must have been placed farther to the north. It appears to have left the Euphrates at Ssifeira below the modern Feludsha, and, extending in a north-easterly direction, it reached the Tigris at some distance above the modern Bagdad. The length was thus from 60 to 75 miles. The wall was constructed of burnt bricks joined together by mortar of asphalt; according to Xenophon,⁶⁹³ who saw parts of it still standing, the breadth was 20 feet and the height 100 feet. The native land, the centre of the kingdom, was thus protected; and even when it was lost, in spite of the protection of the two streams, the canals, and the long wall, the metropolis was intended to present impregnable fortresses to the enemy.

Babylon had no doubt suffered the most severe wounds in all the land of Chaldæa through the capture by Assurbanipal. Berosus says: "Nebuchadnezzar restored the old city, and also built a new one, and that the besieger might not enter the city by averting the stream, he surrounded the inner city as well as the outer with three walls, one of burnt bricks, the other two of unburnt bricks and bitumen, and thus he fortified it in a very striking manner, and adorned the gates with great splendour."⁶⁹⁴ Herodotus, who saw the city more than one hundred years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, when it had been four times captured by Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, describes it thus: "The city is situated in a wide plain, and forms a square of 120 stades on each side, so that the whole circuit reaches 480 stades. It is divided into two parts, and the river Euphrates flows through the middle. It is surrounded by a broad and deep trench, which is always filled with water. The soil taken from this trench was made into bricks, and burnt; and these bricks were applied, first to lining the trench and then to building the wall. The wall is 50 Babylonian cubits in thickness and 200 cubits in height. The bricks are held together by bitumen-mortar, and at every thirtieth course they are separated by a layer of reeds. On the wall are houses of a single chamber, built on either side opposite each other, and yet sufficient space is left between them for a chariot and four to pass. In the wall are one hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts. The wall has wings which run along the river on either side, and the banks are cased with masonry of burnt bricks. The city itself is filled with houses of three and four stories, through which are straight streets – both those which lead to the river and the rest. Those which run down to the river have each a brazen gate in the masonry on the river, through which you pass on steps of burnt brick into the water.⁶⁹⁵ And within this wall, which is as it were the corslet of the city, is another wall, not much inferior in strength to the other, but less in extent. Of the two parts of the city the centre of the one is occupied by the royal citadel, the centre of the other by the temple of Belus with the gates of brass."⁶⁹⁶ In another passage Herodotus gives the names of some of the gates of Babylon; he mentions the gate of Belus, the gate of Semiramis, the gate of Ninus, the gate of the Chaldæans, and the gate of the Cissians.

That gates in Babylon could not be named after Ninus and Semiramis, i. e. after fictitious rulers, and hardly after the Chaldæans, needs no proof in detail. But the narrative of Herodotus, in which these names are found, goes back in other respects to Medo-Persian poems, which, as we already found, could tell of Ninus and Semiramis. The Babylonians were better acquainted with the history of Assyria. It is more striking that in the description of the city Herodotus speaks of the walls and gates of Babylon as if they were uninjured; and yet, some twenty years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus took Babylon by storm; and scarcely twenty years afterwards Darius overcame the city, after a siege which lasted nearly two years. A new rebellion quickly followed, to be crushed by a third capture of the city; and even after this a new rising of the Babylonians was again repressed by Xerxes. After this series of struggles the walls and gates could not have remained uninjured, and Herodotus himself tells us that Darius destroyed the gates after the long siege.⁶⁹⁷ Were Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes likely to allow the Babylonians, after each capture of the city, to restore the walls in which the city trusted? – were they not rather likely to take care that after each capture long portions of the wall should be destroyed, and so remain?

Next to Herodotus in point of time, Xenophon and Ctesias are our informants about Babylon. Xenophon did not see the city; he only came within 45 miles of it. He contents himself with remarking that Babylon, the wealthiest city in Asia, was surrounded by strong and lofty walls; that the Euphrates flowed through it; that it contained a palace and citadels, that the doors of the houses were made of palm-wood.⁶⁹⁸ Ctesias, who had been in Babylon, gives to the wall of the city, "through which the Euphrates flows," a circuit of 360 stades (45 miles). The wall, built of burnt brick and bitumen, broken by numerous large towers, was 50 fathoms in height; and on either bank of the river ran a protecting wall, equal in strength to the city wall. The length of these walls was about 160 stades. His description of the two royal citadels, "both of which lay on the river," one on the west side, the other on the east – the former was surrounded by a triple wall, and had a circuit of 60 stades, while the other on the east side was only half the size – his description of the golden statues of gods in the temple of Belus, and the golden altar and furniture, is already known to us (I. 293). About half a century after Ctesias, Cleitarchus and the companions of Alexander of Macedon inform us that the wall of Babylon had a circuit of 365 stades; the height they give at 50 cubits; the width allowed ample room for two wagons to pass each other. Two hundred and fifty towers rose above the wall, of a corresponding height and thickness. Between the wall and the houses was left a clear space of two plethra.⁶⁹⁹ That the number of towers was so small in comparison with the circuit of the wall is no reason for wonder – so Diodorus or his authority adds – for the city was surrounded by a wide belt of marshes, and it did not appear to be necessary to build towers where the marshes afforded sufficient protection.⁷⁰⁰