Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/112

92 A HISTORY OF ART i CIIALIXKA AND ASSYRIA. ringleaders in those risings against Assyria, and, in later years, against Persia, which cost Babylon so dearly. Once only was the success they promised achieved, and that was in the time of Nabopolassar, when Nineveh was exhausted by its long succession of wars and victories. On every other occasion the upper hand remained with races less instructed, indeed, and less refined, but among whom the power concentrated in the hands of the sove- reign had been utilized to drive all the vital forces of the kingdom into the practice of war and preparation for it. On the ether hand, Babylon enjoyed certain elements of pros- perity and guarantees of a long national existence which were wanting to thos'e rivals under whose yoke she had more than once to pass. The ruling classes in Chaldaea were quicker in intellect and far better educated than elsewhere. Their country lent itself to a wide and well-organised system of cultivation better than the hilly districts of Assyria or the narrow valleys and sterile plains of Iran. Communication was more prompt and easy than among the terraces which rise one above another from the left bank of the Euphrates up to the high lands of Persia and Media : in order to pass from one of these terraces to another, the bare rock has to be climbed in a fashion that brings no little danger to the traveller and his patient beasts of burden. 1 In Chaldaea, on the other hand, the proximity of the two rivers to each other, and the perfect horizontality of the soil, make the work of irrigation very easy. The agriculturists vere not exposed to the danger of a complete failure of crops, a misfortune which overtook the upper regions of Mesopotamia often enough. There the Euphrates and Tigris are wide apart, and the land between them is far from being a dead level. Many districts had to depend almost entirely upon the rainfall for irrigation. Again, when it was a question of journeying from one city to another or transporting the produce of the fields, the Chaldsean could choose between the land routes that lay along the banks of the canals, or the waterways that intersected each other over the whole surface of the country. In these days the journey between Bagdad and Bassorah, a distance of some three hundred miles, involves a long detour to the east along the foot of the mountains, in order to avoid impassable marshes and bands of 1 LOFTUS, Travels and Researches in Chaldcca and Susiaiia, p. 309. The Greeks gave the appropriate name of KAt/xa/ces to those stepped roads that lead from the valley and the sea coast to the high plains of Persia.