In the first contest Semiramis was victorious, and she took 100,000 prisoners; a thousand ships of the Indians were sunk in the Indus. But the Indian king, pretending flight, led the army of Semiramis after him. Having caused a large bridge to be built over the Indus, Semiramis landed her entire army on the other side, and with her mock elephants in front of her forces, she pursued the retreating Indians. At first the Indians were alarmed by these false elephants; but finding out the stratagem, the king of India turned, and attacking Semiramis with his real elephants, her troops were put to flight, and she herself was wounded by an arrow and javelin thrown by the Indian king, who was mounted on his largest elephant. Semiramis and the remnant of her army hastened across the Indus; and as Stabrobates had been warned by seers not to cross the river, they came to terms of capitulation, and exchanged prisoners. Then Semiramis returned to Assyria with only one-third of her army left.

When she arrived again within the borders of her own kingdom, she was informed that her son Ninyas had conspired against her. As the oracle in the temple of Jupiter Ammon had previously declared that when her son should conspire against her, she would disappear from the sight of mortals and be received among the immortals, this news occasioned no resentment against Ninyas; but she immediately abdicated the throne and transferred the kingdom to him, and is said to have put herself to death, as though according to the oracle she had raised herself to the gods. Others relate that she was reported to have been changed into a dove, and thereupon flew out of the palace with a flock of doves. Wherefore, the Assyrians regard Semiramis as an immortal, and the dove as sacred to divinity. She was sixty-two years of age, having reigned forty-two years.

The following is one of the inscriptions in which she gives her own genealogy, claiming celestial origin. She is said to have inscribed her name and praises of her own greatness upon many of the monuments she erected to immortalize herself.

“MY FATHER WAS JUPITER BELUS;
MY GRANDFATHER, BABYLONIAN SATURN;
MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER, ETHIOPIAN SATURN;
MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S FATHER, EGYPTIAN SATURN;
AND MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER, PHŒNIX
CŒLUS OGYGES.”

This amusing catalogue of high-sounding ancestors may not seem so very ridiculous in view of the supposition that she never did exist as a mortal, but that her name and exploits have come down through the legends of poetry. For it is stated by some authorities that the story of Semiramis, as related by Ctesias, from which source Diodorus takes his account, was founded upon Medo-Persian poems sung by the minstrels of Media and Persia, and that these poems represent the Assyrians as worshipping a female deity, who was called Istar-Bilit, the war-goddess, and also goddess of love. Istar of Arbela was the goddess of battle, and Istar of Nineveh was the goddess of love. Doves were sacred to her, and in the temples of Syria there were statues of this goddess with a golden dove on her head. She was invoked there under the name of Semiramis, a word meaning “high name.” Thus the Medo-Persian minstrels have changed the legend of an Assyrian goddess into a heroine, and made her the founder of the Assyrian empire, just as Greek poets represent their heroes as children of the Immortals of Olympus.

Whether the story of Semiramis is a fabulous legend, or whether she is really a historical character, is rather difficult to determine; but her supposed exploits are so interwoven with Assyrian and Babylonian history that most authorities give her a prominent historical place; and if half of her marvellous deeds are true, she must without doubt hold an illustrious place amongst the famous queens of ancient history.

DIDO.
937 B.C.

“As on the banks of Eurotas, or on Mount Cynthus’ top, Diana leads her train of mountain nymphs, bearing her quiver on her shoulder, and moving majestic, she towers above the other goddesses; such Dido was, and such, with cheerful grace, she passed amid her train, urging forward the labor of founding and enlarging her mighty kingdom.”—Virgil.