ance, and merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when he arrived under the walls of the city, if the statement of Herodotus is correct. And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Kunaxa against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in preparation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch, thirty feet wide and eight feet deep, from the wall of Media to the river Euphrates, a distance of twelve parasangs, or forty-five English miles, leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close alongside of the river. Yet when the invading army arrived at this important pass, they found not a man there to defend it, and all of them marched without resist ance through the narrow inlet. Cyrus the younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that his brother would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of defending Babylon, instead of which, two days afterward, Artaxerxes attacked him on an open plain of ground where there was no advantage of position on either side, though the invaders were taken rather unawares in consequence of their extreme confidence arising from recent unopposed entrance within the artificial ditch. we advance in this history, further evidences of the same attributes, which it is essential to bear in mind for the purpose of appreciating both Grecian dealing with Asiatics and the comparative absence of such defects in the Grecian character. Vast walls and deep ditches are an inestimable aid to a brave and well-commanded garrison, but they cannot be made entirely to supply the want of bravery and intelligence. In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon may have been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by Cyrus is certain. On first setting out for this conquest he was about to cross the river Gyndes (one of the affluents from the east which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high-road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana), when one of the sacred white horses which accompanied him insulted the river so far as to march in and try to cross it by himself. The Gyndes resented this insult, and the horse was drowned; upon which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength of the river as that women in future should pass it without wetting their knees. Accordingly, he employed his entire army during the whole summer season in digging three hundred and sixty artiThis anecdote is the more valuable as an ficial channels to disseminate the unity of illustration because all its circumstances are the stream. Such, according to Herodotus, transmitted to us by a discerning eye-witness. was the incident which postponed for one And both the two incidents here brought year the fall of the great Babylon; but in into comparison demonstrate the recklessness, the next spring Cyrus and his army were changefulness and incapacity of calculation be- before the walls, after having defeated and longing to the Asiatic mind of that day, as driven in the population, who came out to well as the great command of hands pos- fight. But the walls were artificial mounsessed by these kings, and their prodigal tains-three hundred feet high, seventy-five waste of human labor. We shall see, as feet thick, and forming a square of fifteen miles to each side-within which the besieged defied attack, and even blockade, having previously stored up several years' provision. Through the midst of these walls, however, flowed the Euphrates; and this river, which had been so laboriously trained to serve for protection, trade and sustenance to the Babylonians, was now made the avenue of their ruin. Having left a detachment of his army at the two points where the Euphrates enters and quits the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to the higher part of its course, where an ancient Babylonian queen had prepared one of the great lateral reservoirs for carrying off, in case of need, the superfluity of its water. Near this point Cyrus caused another reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by means of which he drew off the water of the Euphrates to such a degree that it became not above the height of a man's thigh. The period chosen was that of a great Babylonian festival, when the whole population were engaged in amusement and revelry; and the Persian troops left near the town, watching their opportunity, entered from both sides along the bed of the river, and took it by surprise with scarcely any resistance. At no other time except during a festival could they have done this, says Herodotus, had the river been ever so low, for both banks, throughout the whole length of the town, were provided with quays, with continuous walls and with gates at the end of every street which led down to the river at right angles; so that if the population had not been disqualified by the influences of the moment, they would have caught the assailants in the bed of the river "as a trap" and overwhelmed them from the walls alongside. Within a square of fifteen miles to each side, we are not surprised to hear that both the extremities were already in the power of the besiegers before the central population heard of it, and while they were yet absorbed in unconscious festivity. Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circumstances which placed Babylon, the greatest city of Western Asia, in the power of the Persians. To what extent the information communicated to him was incorrect or exaggerated we cannot now decide, but the way in which the city was treated would lead us to suppose that its acquisition cannot have cost the conqueror either much time or much loss. Cyrus comes into the list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants, with their whole territory, become tributary to the Persians, forming the richest satrapy in the empire; but we do not hear that the people were otherwise ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls and gates were left untouched. This was very different from the way in which the Medes had treated Nineveh, which seems to have been ruined and for a long time absolutely uninhabited, though reoccupied on a reduced scale under the Parthian empire; and very different, also, from the way in which Babylon itself was treated twenty years afterward by Darius when reconquered after a revolt. The importance of Babylon, marking as it does one of the peculiar forms of civilization belonging to the ancient world in a state of full development, gives an interest even to the half-authenticated stories respecting its capture; but the other exploits ascribed to Cyrus-his invasion of India across the des ert of Arachosia, and his attack upon the and Pasargada, being reserved for the burialplace of the kings and the religious sanctuary of the empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana was made we are not informed; it lay eastward of the Tigris, between Babylonia and Persis proper, and its people, the Kissians, as far as we can discern, were of Assyrian, and not of Arian, race. The river Choaspes, near Susa, was supposed to furnish the only water fit for the palate of the great king, and is said to have been carried about with him wherever he went. REVOLT. Of his real exploits we know little except RECAPTURE BY DARIUS OF BABYLON AFTER their results, but in what we read respecting him there seems, though amidst constant fighting, very little cruelty. Xenophon has selected his life as the subject of a moral romance which for a long time was cited as authentic history, and which even now serves as an authority, expressed or implied, for disputable, and even incorrect, conclusions. His extraordinary activity and conquests admit of no doubt. He left the Persian empire extending from Sogdiana and the rivers Jaxartes and Indus eastward to the Hellespont and the Syrian coast westward, and his successors made no permanent addition to it except that of Egypt. Phenicia and Judæa were dependencies of Babylon at the time when he conquered it, with their princes and grandees in Babylonian captivity. They seem to have yielded to him and become his tributaries without difficulty, and the restoration of their captives was conceded to them. It was from Cyrus that the habits of the Persian kings took commencement to dwell at Susa in the winter and Ekbatana during the summer, the primitive territory of Persis, with its two towns of Persepolis A devoted adherent and a memorable piece of cunning laid prostrate before Darius the mighty walls and gates of the revolted Babylon. The inhabitants of that city had employed themselves assiduously—both during the lax provincial superintendence of the false Smerdis and during the period of confusion and conflict which elapsed before Darius became firmly established and obeyed-in making every preparation both for declaring and sustaining their independence. Having accumulated a large store of provisions and other requisites for a long siege without previous detection, they at length proclaimed their independence openly. And such was the intensity of their resolution to maintain it that they had recourse to a proceeding which, if correctly reported by Herodotus, forms one of the most frightful enormities recorded in his history. To make their provisions last out longer, they strangled all the women in the city, reserving only their mothers, and one woman to each family for the purpose of baking. We cannot but suppose that this has been magnified from a partial into a universal destruction. | several advantages in different sallies, accord Yet, taking it even with such allowance, it illustrates that ferocious force of will, and that predominance of strong nationality, combined with antipathy to foreigners, over all the gentler sympathies, which seems to mark the Semitic nations, and which may be traced so much in the Jewish history of Josephus. Darius, assembling all the forces in his power, laid siege to the revolted city, but could make no impression upon it either by force or by stratagem. He tried to repeat the proceeding by which Cyrus had taken it at first, but the besieged were found this time on their guard. The siege had lasted twenty months without the smallest progress, and the Babylonians derided the besiegers from the height of their impregnable walls, when a distinguished Persian nobleman-Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus, who had been one of the 'seven conspirators against Smerdis presented himself one day before Darius in a state of frightful mutilation: his nose and ears were cut off, and his body misused in every way. He had designedly so maimed himself, "thinking it intolerable that Assyrians should thus laugh the Persians to scorn," in the intention, which he presently intimated to Darius, of passing into the town as a deserter with a view of betraying it, for which purpose measures were concerted. The Babylonians, seeing a Persian of the highest rank in so calamitous a condition, readily believed his assurance that he had been thus punished by the king's order, and that he came over to them as the only means of procuring for himself single vengeance. They entrusted him with the command of a detachment, with which he gained ing to previous concert with Darius, until, at length, the confidence of the Babylonians becoming unbounded, they placed in his hands the care of the principal gates. At the critical moment these gates were thrown open, and the Persians became masters of the city. Thus was the impregnable Babylon a second time reduced, and Darius took precautions on this occasion to put it out of condition for resisting a third time. He caused the walls and gates to be demolished and three thousand of the principal citizens to be crucified; the remaining inhabitants were left in the dismantled city, fifty thousand women being levied by assessment upon the neighboring provinces to supply the place of the women strangled when it first revolted. Zopyrus was appointed satrap of the territory for life, with enjoyment of its entire revenues, receiving, besides, every additional reward which it was in the power of Darius to bestow, and generous assurances from the latter that he would rather have Zopyrus without wounds than the possession of Babylon. The demolition of the walls here mentioned is not to be regarded as complete and continuous, nor was there any necessity that it should be so. Partial demolition would be quite sufficient to leave the city without defence, and the description given by Herodotus of the state of things as they stood at the time of his visit proves that portions of the walls yet subsisted. One circumstance is yet to be added in reference to the subsequent condition of Babylon under the Persian empire. The city, with the territory belonging to it, constituted a satrapy which not only paid a larger tribute |