Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/75

Towns and their Defences. 57 We can hardly read of such measurements without some astonishment. It seems difficult, however, to doubt the formal statement of such a careful eye-witness as Herodotus. Although the Greek historian was quite ready to repeat the fantastic tales he heard in the distant countries to which his travels led him — a habit we are far from wishing to blame — modern criticism has never succeeded in convicting him of falsehood or exao-p-eration in matters of which he could judge with his own eyes. Our surprise at his figures is diminished when we remember with what prodigious rapidity buildings of sun dried bricks could be erected. The material was at hand in any possible quantity ; the erection of such a length of wall was only a question of hands. Now if we suppose, with M. Oppert, that the work was undertaken by Nebuchadnezzar after the fall of Nineveh, that prince may very well have employed whole nations upon it, driving them into the workshops as the captive Jews were driven. In such a fashion the great wail that united into one city towns which had been previously separated — such as the original Babylon, Cutha, and Borsippa — might have been raised without any great difficulty. It is certain that the population of such a vast extent of country cannot have been equally dense at all points. A large part must have been occupied by royal parks, by gardens, vineyards, and even cultivated fields. Babylon must, in fact, have been rather a vast intrenched camp than a city in the true sense of the word. At the time when Herodotus and Ctesias visited Babylon, this wall — which was dismantled by the Persians in order to render revolt more difficult — must have been almost everywhere in a state of ruin, but enough of it remained to attract curious travellers, just as the picturesque fortifications of the Greek emperors are one of the sights of modern Constantinople. The more intelligent among them, such as Herodotus, took note of the measurements given to them as representing the original state of the great work whose ruins lay before their eyes and confirmed the statements of their guides. 1 The quarter then still inhabited was the Royal City, the true Babylon, whose great public works have left such formidable traces even to the present day. Naturally no vestige of the tunnel under the 1 Even now the wall of the Royal City stands up more than thirty feet above the level of the plain. VOL. II. . 1