A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Semiramis
SEMIRAMIS,
A celebrated Queen of Assyria, was the wife of Menones, governor of Nineveh, and accompanied him to the siege of Bactria, where by her advice and bravery she hastened the king's operations, and took the city. Her wisdom and beauty attracted the attention of Ninus, King of Assyria, who asked her of her husband, offering him his daughter Sozana in her stead; but Menones refused his consent; and when Ninus added threats to entreaties, he hung himself. Semiramis then married Ninus, about B. C. 2200, and became the mother of Ninyas. She acquired so great an influence over the king, that she is said to have persuaded him to resign the crown for one day, and command that she should be proclaimed queen and sole empress of Assyria for that time; when one of her first orders was that Ninus should be put to death, in order that she might retain possession of the sovereign authority.
She made Babylon the most magnificent city in the world; she visited every part of her dominions, and left everywhere monuments of her greatness. She levelled mountains, filled up valleys, and had water conveyed by immense aqueducts to barren deserts and un-fruitful plains. She was not less distinguished as a warrior. She conquered many of the neighbouring nations, Ethiopia among the rest; and she defeated the King of India, at the river Indus; but pursuing him into his own country, he drew her into an ambush, and put her to flight, with the loss of a great number of her troops. To prevent him from pursuing her still farther, she destroyed the bridge over the Indus, as soon as her troops had crossed it. After exchanging prisoners at Bactria, she returned home with hardly a third of her army, which, if we believe Ctesias, consisted of 300,000 foot-soldiers and 5000 horse, besides camels and armed chariots. At her return, finding her son engaged in a conspiracy against her, she resigned the government to him. Ninyas is said, notwithstanding, to have killed his mother himself, in the sixty-second year of her age, and the twenty-fifth of her reign.