Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/16

10 but this, unfortunately, begins with the history of the new Babylonian empire. Moreover there is preserved, though only in fragments, the work of a certain Abydenos (B. C. 260), which contains a section on Assyria. This work exists only in the quotations of Eusebius and other Christian writers.

Of the other Greek authors there are two who are specially worthy of mention— viz., Herodotus and Ctesias. They doubtless had opportunity to draw directly from the Babylonian—i. e., the Medo-Persian —sources. Ctesias, the later of the two, who lived in the first years of the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon (405–358 B. C.) at the Persian court, wrote a work in opposition to Herodotus on the history of Persia, which he claimed was largely based on the original sources. Nevertheless his accounts are in the highest degree unreliable, and show inexcusable carelessness in the matter of names and dates. Herodotus, in his history, treats the question of the Medes and Persians quite exhaustively, but his accounts of the Assyro-Babylonian history are meager. He makes references to an intended work on Assyrian history, which is now lost, if indeed it ever existed. Herodotus had visited Western Asia, especially Babylonia; but since he must have been incapable of using the native documents of the Babylonians, he was compelled to rely on vouchers, who, it appears, were of Persian descent.