Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/32

26 the king, who regarded the town as impregnable, foresee that in a few decades after his death Babylon would fall into the hands of his enemies. Cyrus, to whom the town voluntarily opened its gates, not only improved the political status, but also participated in the Babylonian worship and fostered it in many ways. The decline of the town began with the conquest of Babylon by the Persians, since it ceased to be a royal residence, and became merely the chief town of a satrapy. In the year 488 Darius I. demolished the walls and towers as well as the fortifications, in order to take away from the inhabitants every hope of reëstablishing their independence. In the reign of Xerxes I. (485–465) the town was again conquered and plundered. It was in this conquest that the great temple of Bel-Merodach (Esagila) was destroyed. From that time the decay of the town was rapid, yet when Herodotus visited Babylon a part of its old splendor must have still remained, for he begins his vivid description of the town with the words: "No other town which we know was so beautifully built." (I., 178.) When Alexander the Great had conquered Persia, he planned to make Babylon the metropolis of his broad empire, but he died, during its reconstruction, in the palace which was once Nebuchadrezar's. After that the population of Babylon withdrew more and more to the newly built town, Seleucia. In later times Roman officials dwelt in Babylon. Strabo (XVI. i, 5) calls the city a deserted town. It is hard to say when Babylon ceased to exist. Its abundant building material was appropriated in the Middle Ages by the neighboring tribes to build the cities of Ctesiphon, Bagdad, Kufa, Mesched-Ali, Mesched-Hussein, and