Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/77

 Towns and their Defences. 59 struck by the regularity of the plan, the length of the streets, and the height of the houses. In these particulars it was very different from the low and irregularly built Greek cities of the fifth century b.c. The height of the houses is to be explained partly by the necessity for accommodating a very dense population, partly by the desire for as much shade as possible. 1 The decadence of Babylon had begun when Herodotus visited it towards the middle of the fifth century before our era ; 2 but the town was still standing, and some of the colossal works of its later kings were still intact. The last dynasty had come to an end less than a century before. We are ready, therefore, to believe the simple and straightforward description he has left us, even in those particulars which are so well calculated to cause surprise. The evidence of Ctesias, who saw Babylon some half century later, seems here and there to be tainted with exaggeration, but on the whole it agrees with that of Herodotus. Supposing that he does expand his figures a little, Ctesias is yet de- scribing buildings whose ruins, at least, he saw with his own eyes, and sometimes his statements are borne out by those of Alexander's historians. 3 The case of Nineveh is very different. Of that city Herodotus hardly knew more than the name ; he contents himself with mere passing allusions to it. 4 Ctesias is trammelled by fewer scruples. When he wrote his history Nineveh had ceased to exist for more than two centuries ; the statements of Xenophon 5 prove that at the time of the famous retreat its site was practically deserted and its name almost forgotten in the very district in which its ruins stood. But the undaunted Ctesias gives us a description of the Assyrian capital as circumstantial as if he had lived there in the days of Sennacherib or Assurbanipal. According to his account it formed an elongated rectangle, the long sides being 150 stades (17 miles 380 yards), and the shorter 90 stades (10 miles 595 1 And this makes us think that the streets were narrow, a conjecture confirmed by the words of Herodotus. In speaking of the doors above mentioned by which the river was reached, he does not use the word irvXai, but -rrvXtSe^, its diminutive. If these doors were so small, the streets must have been lanes. 2 This we gather from more than one phrase of the historian (ii. 183 and 196). 3 Diodorus, ii. viii. 3, 4 All that he says is that it was on the Tigris (i. 193), that it had a king called Sardanapalus (ii. 150), and that it was taken by the Medes (i. 103, 106). 5 Anabasis, iii. 4.