Now we learn from hence that the enterprise, even by those who believed the narrative of Nekôs’s captains, was regarded as at once desperate and unprofitable; but doubtless many persons treated it as a mere “Phenician lie,”[547] (to use an expression proverbial in ancient times). The circumnavigation of Libya is said to have been one of the projects conceived by Alexander the Great,[548] and we may readily believe that if he had lived longer, it would have been confided to Nearchus, or some other officer of the like competence: nor can there be any reason why it should not have succeeded, especially since it would have been undertaken from the eastward, to the great profit of geographical knowledge among the ancients, but with little advantage to their commerce. There is then adequate reason for admitting that these Phenicians rounded the cape of Good Hope from the East about 600 B. C., more than two thousand years earlier than Vasco de Gama did the same thing from the West: though the discovery was in the first instance of no avail, either for commerce or for geographical science.

Besides the maritime range of Tyre and Sidon, their trade by land in the interior of Asia was of great value and importance. They were the speculative merchants who directed the march of the caravans laden with Assyrian and Egyptian products across the deserts which separated them from inner Asia,[549]—an operation which presented hardly less difficulties, considering the Arabian depredators whom they were obliged to conciliate and even to employ as carriers, than the longest coast-voyage. They seem to have stood alone in antiquity in their willingness to brave, and their ability to surmount, the perils of a distant land-traffic;[550] and their descendants at Carthage and Utica were not less active in pushing caravans far into the interior of Africa.

CHAPTER XIX.
ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.

The name of the Assyrians, who formed one wing of this early system of intercourse and commerce, rests chiefly upon the great cities of Nineveh and Babylon. To the Assyrians of Nineveh (as has been already mentioned) is ascribed in early times a very extensive empire, covering much of Upper Asia, as well as Mesopotamia or the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Respecting this empire,—its commencement, its extent, or even the mode in which it was put down,—nothing certain can be affirmed; but it seems unquestionable that many great and flourishing cities,—and a population inferior in enterprise, but not in industry, to the Phenicians,—were to be found on the Euphrates and Tigris, in times anterior to the first Olympiad. Of these cities, Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates were the chief;[551] the latter being in some sort of dependence, probably, on the sovereigns of Nineveh, yet governed by kings or chiefs of its own, and comprehending an hereditary order of priests named Chaldæans, masters of all the science and literature as well as of the religious ceremonies current among the people, and devoted, from very early times, to that habit of astronomical observation which their brilliant sky so much favored.

The people called Assyrians or Syrians—for among the Greek authors no constant distinction is maintained between the two[552]— were distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by Mount Zagros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount Ararat, by which they were separated from the Medes,—and extending from thence westward and southward to the Euxine sea, the river Halys, the Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf,—thus covering the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates south of Armenia, as well as Syria and Syria-Palæstine, and the territory eastward of the Halys called Kappadokia. But the Chaldæan order of priests appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian gulf. The vast, rich, and lofty temple of Bêlus in that city, served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount ascendency of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans,—though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the Euxine.[553]

There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their astronomical observations, which cannot be traced as of definite and recorded date higher than the era of Nabonassar[554] (747 B. C.), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times, there can be no doubt, that compared with any of their contemporaries of the sixth century B. C.—either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics—they stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thalês and Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by Herodotus[555] to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians; and the continuous observation of the heavens both by the Egyptian and Chaldæan priests, had determined with considerable exactness both the duration of the solar year and other longer periods of astronomical recurrence; thus impressing upon intelligent Greeks the imperfection of their own calendars, and furnishing them with a basis not only for enlarged observations of their own, but also for the discovery and application of those mathematical theories whereby astronomy first became a science.

Nor was it only the astronomical acquisitions of the priestly caste which distinguished the early Babylonians. The social condition, the fertility of the country, the dense population, and the persevering industry of the inhabitants, were not less remarkable. Respecting Nineveh,[556] once the greatest of the Assyrian cities, we have no good information, nor can we safely reason from the analogy of Babylon, inasmuch as the peculiarities of the latter were altogether determined by the Euphrates, while Nineveh was seated considerably farther north, and on the east bank of the Tigris: but Herodotus gives us valuable particulars respecting Babylon as an eye-witness, and we may judge by his account respecting its condition after much suffering from the Persian conquest, what it had been a century earlier in the days of its full splendor.

The neighboring territory receiving but little rain,[557] owed its fertility altogether to the annual overflowing of the Euphrates, on which the labor bestowed, for the purpose of limiting, regularizing, and diffusing its supply of water, was stupendous. Embankments along the river,—artificial reservoirs in connection with it, to receive an excessive increase,—new curvilinear channels, dug for the water in places where the stream was too straight and rapid,—broad and deep canals crossing the whole space between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and feeding numerous rivulets[558] or ditches which enabled the whole breadth of land to be irrigated,—all these toilsome applications were requisite to insure due moisture for the Babylonian soil; but they were rewarded with an exuberance of produce, in the various descriptions of grain, such as Herodotus hardly dares to particularize. The country produced no trees except the date-palm, which was turned to account in many different ways, and from the fruit of which, both copious and of extraordinary size, wine as well as bread were made.[559] Moreover, Babylonia was still more barren of stone than of wood, so that buildings as well as walls were constructed almost entirely of brick, for which the earth was well adapted; while a flow of mineral bitumen, found near the town and river of Is, higher up the Euphrates, served for cement. Such persevering and systematic labor, applied for the purpose of irrigation, excites our astonishment; yet the description of what was done for defence is still more imposing. Babylon, traversed in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded by walls three hundred feet in height, seventy-five feet in thickness, and composing a square of which each side was one hundred and twenty stadia (or nearly fifteen English miles) in length: around the outside of the walls was a broad and deep moat from whence the material for the bricks composing them had been excavated; while one hundred brazen gates served for ingress and egress. Besides, there was an interior wall less thick, but still very strong; and as a still farther obstruction to invaders from the north and north-east, another high and thick wall was built at some miles from the city, across much of the space between the Euphrates and the Tigris,—called the wall of Media, seemingly a little to the north of that point where the two rivers most nearly approach to each other, and joining the Tigris on its west bank. Of the houses many were three or four stories high, and the broad and straight streets, unknown in a Greek town until the distribution of the peiræeus by Hippodamus, near the time of the Peloponnesian war, were well calculated to heighten the astonishment raised by the whole spectacle in a visitor like Herodotus. The royal palace, with its memorable terraces or hanging gardens, formed the central and commanding edifice in one half of the city,—the temple of Bêlus in the other half.

That celebrated temple, standing upon a basis of one square stadium, and inclosed in a precinct of two square stadia in dimension, was composed of eight solid towers, built one above the other, and is alleged by Strabo to have been as much as a stadium or furlong high (the height is not specified by Herodotus):[560] it was full of costly decorations, and possessed an extensive landed property. Along the banks of the river, in its passage through the city, were built spacious quays, and a bridge on stone piles, for the placing of which—as Herodotus was told—Semiramis had caused the river Euphrates to be drained off into the large side reservoir and lake constructed higher up its course.[561]