[558] Herodot. i, 193; Xenophon, Anab. i, 7, 15; ii, 4, 13-22.
[559] About the date-palms (φοίνικες) in the ancient Babylonia, see Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii, 6, 2-6; Xenoph. Cyrop. vii, 5, 12; Anab. ii, 3, 15; Diodor. ii, 53: there were some which bore no fruit, but which afforded good wood for house-purposes and furniture.
Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and produce of the soil in Babylonia as Herodotus, though the two hundred-fold, and sometimes three hundred-fold, which was stated to the latter as the produce of the land in grain, appears in his statement cut down to fifty-fold, or one hundred-fold (Hist. Plant. viii, 7, 4).
Respecting the numerous useful purposes for which the date-palm was made to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and sixty), see Strabo, xiv, p. 742; Ammian. Marcell. xxiv, 3.
[560] Herodot. i, 178, Strabo, xiv, p. 738; Arrian, E. A. vii, 17, 7. Strabo does not say that it was a stadium in perpendicular height: we may suppose that the stadium represents the entire distance in upward march from the bottom to the top. He as well as Arrian say that Xerxês destroyed both the temple of Bêlus and all the other temples at Babylon (καθεῖλεν, κατέσκαψεν, iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 4); he talks of the intention of Alexander to rebuild it, and of his directions given to level new foundations, carrying away the loose earth and ruins. This cannot be reconciled with the narrative of Herodotus, nor with the statement of Pliny (vi, 30), nor do I believe it to be true. Xerxês plundered the temple of much of its wealth and ornaments, but that he knocked down the vast building and the other Babylonian temples, is incredible. Babylon always continued one of the chief cities of the Persian empire.
[561] What is stated in the text respecting Babylon, is taken almost entirely from Herodotus: I have given briefly the most prominent points in his interesting narrative (i, 178-193), which well deserves to be read at length.
Herodotus is in fact our only original witness, speaking from his own observation and going into details, respecting the marvels of Babylon. Ktêsias, if his work had remained, would have been another original witness; but we have only a few extracts from him by Diodorus. Strabo seems not to have visited Babylon, nor can it be affirmed that Kleitarchus did so. Arrian had Aristobulus to copy, and is valuable as far as he goes; but he does not enter into many particulars respecting the magnitude of the city or its appurtenances. Berosus also, if we possessed his book, would have been an eye-witness of the state of Babylon more than a century and a half later than Herodotus, but the few fragments remaining are hardly at all descriptive (see Berosi Fragm. pp. 64-67, ed. Richter).
The magnitude of the works described by Herodotus naturally provokes suspicions of exaggeration; but there are good grounds for trusting him, in my judgment, on all points which fell under his own vision and means of verification, as distinguished from past facts, on which he could do no more than give what he heard. He had bestowed much attention on Assyria and its phenomena, as is evident from the fact that he had written (or prepared to write, if the suspicion be admissible that the work was never completed,—Fabricius, Biblioth. Græc. ii, 20, 5) a special Assyrian history, which has not reached us (Ἀσσυρίοισι λόγοισι, i, 106-184). He is very precise in the measures of which he speaks; thus having described the dimensions of the walls in “royal cubits,” he goes on immediately to tell us how much that measure differs from an ordinary cubit. He designedly suppresses a part of what he had heard respecting the produce of the Babylonian soil, from the mere apprehension of not being believed.
To these reasons for placing faith in Herodotus we may add another, not less deserving of attention. That which seems incredible in the constructions which he describes, arises simply from their enormous bulk, and the frightful quantity of human labor which must have been employed to execute them. He does not tell us, like Berosus (Fragm. p. 66), that these wonderful fortifications were completed in fifteen days,—nor like Quintus Curtius, that the length of one stadium was completed on each successive day of the year (v, 1, 26). To bring to pass all that Herodotus has described, is a mere question of time, patience, number of laborers, and cost of maintaining them,—for the materials were both close at hand and inexhaustible.
Now what would be the limit imposed upon the power and will of the old kings of Babylonia on these points? We can hardly assign that limit with so much confidence as to venture to pronounce a statement of Herodotus incredible, when he tells us something which he has seen, or verified from eye-witnesses. The Pyramids and other works in Egypt are quite sufficient to make us mistrustful of our own means of appreciation; and the great wall of China (extending for twelve hundred English miles along what was once the whole northern frontier of the Chinese empire,—from twenty to twenty-five feet high,—wide enough for six horses to run abreast, and furnished with a suitable number of gates and bastions) contains more material than all the buildings of the British empire put together, according to Barrow’s estimate (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 7, t. v.; and Ideler, Ueber die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1837, ch. 3, p. 291).