[6] Equivalents in English feet for these measurements have been estimated as eighty-five feet for the width and three hundred and thirty-five feet for the height.
[7] Now called the Persian Gulf.
[8] Semiramis is regarded by modern antiquarians as a fabulous personage. By some of them she has been identified with the goddess Astarte.
[9] Antiquarians have great doubts as to the identity of this queen. By some she is thought to have been the wife of Nebuchadnezzar, who began to reign in 604 b.c., and the mother or grandmother of Belshazzar, the last of the kings of Babylon.
[10] That is, from the sea which encircled Greece.
[11] Herodotus means by this the King of Persia.
[12] Susa was the capital of Susiana, a country lying at the head of the Persian Gulf.
[13] Here again for Red Sea we must read Persian Gulf.