Well, the pyramids in Egypt were one; the magnificent statue of Jupiter at Olympia, where the Olympic Games were held, was another—so those with the Hanging Gardens make three.
Nebuchadnezzar believed in idols like those terrible monsters the Phenicians worshiped. The Jews away off in Jerusalem believed in one God. Nebuchadnezzar wanted the Jews to worship his gods, but they would not. He also wanted them to pay him taxes, and they would not. So he sent his armies to Jerusalem, destroyed that city, burnt the beautiful Temple that Solomon had built, and brought the Jews and all their belongings to Babylon. There in Babylon Nebuchadnezzar kept the Jews prisoners, and there in Babylon the Jews remained prisoners for fifty years.
Babylon had become not only the most magnificent city in the world; it had become also the most wicked. The people of Babylon gave themselves up to the wildest pleasures. Their only thought seemed to be, “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry”; they thought nothing of the morrow; the more wicked the pleasure the more they liked it.
But although Nebuchadnezzar seemed able to do and able to have everything in the world he wanted, he finally went crazy. He thought he was a bull, and he used to get down on his hands and knees and eat grass, imagining he was a beast of the field.
And Babylon, in spite of its tremendous walls and brass gates, was doomed. Babylon was to be conquered. It didn’t seem possible. How could it be conquered, and who was to do the conquering? You would probably never guess.
19
A Surprise Party
When I was a boy I was always told, and you have probably been told the same thing:
“You can have no dessert until you have eaten your dinner.”
No matter whether I was hungry or not, “No dinner, no dessert.” This was a rule which my father said was “like the laws of the Medes and Persians.”