Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/74

56 A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria." stood the temple of Belus, now represented by the mound of Babil ; about the middle of the temple stood the royal palace and hanging gardens." l The Royal City was the city properly speaking, the old city whose buildings were set closely about the great temple and the palace, the latter forming, like the Old Seraglio at Constantinople, a fortified town in itself with a wall some twenty stades (4043 yards) in circumference. A second wall, measuring forty stades in total length, turned the palace and the part of the city in its immediate neighbourhood into a sort of acropolis. Perhaps the nobles and priests may have inhabited this part of the town, the common people being relegated to the third circle. In the towns of Asia Minor at the present day the Turks alone live in the fortified inclosures, which are called kale h , or citadels, the rest of the town being occupied by the rayahs of every kind, whether Greek or Armenian. There is, then, nothing in the description of Diodorus at which we need feel surprise. Our difficulty begins when we have to form a judgment upon the assertion of Herodotus, who speaks of an inclosure 120 stades (13 miles 1385 yards) square. 2 Accord- ing to this the circumference of Babylon must have been nearly 55^ English miles, which w r ould make it considerably larger than what is called Greater London, and more than three times the size of Paris. Here, strangely enough, Ctesias gives a more moderate figure than Herodotus, as we find Diodorus estimating the circumference of the great enceinte at 360 stades (41 miles 600 yards). 3 1 G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 55, 56. M. Oppert also admits that this is the only city that has left traces that cannot easily be mistaken. (Expeditioti scientifique, vol. i. pp. 194, 195.) 2 Herodotus, i. 178. 3 Diodorus, ii. vii. 3. The following passage has been quoted from Aristotle's Politics (iii. 1), as supporting the assertion of Diodorus : " It is obvious that a town is not made by a wall ; one might, if that were so, make the Peloponnesus into a town. Babylon, perhaps, and some other towns belong to this class, their enceinte inclosing towns rather than cities." The text of Aristotle seems to me to prove nothing more than that the philosopher was acquainted with the descriptions of Diodorus and Ctesias. He says nothing as to their exactness ; he merely borrows an illustration from them, by which he attempts to make his thought more clear, and to explain the difference between a real city with an organic life of its own, and a mere space surrounded by walls, in which men might live in close neighbourhood with each other, but with nothing that could be called civic life. All the texts relating to the ancient boundaries of Babylon will be found united in M. Oppert's examination of this question.