Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/50

44 Strabo speaks in three places of the strongholds and towers, mountain roads and aqueducts, bridges and canals, which Semiramis constructed in Asia. (So, 529, 736.) Lucian attributes the old temples of Syria to Semiramis; Polysenus also, and the Armenian Moses of Chorene mention this half-historical queen. It is remarkable that among the Jewish rabbis she figured as the wife of Nebuchadrezar. Even to-day in Armenia two names recall the memory of this Assyrian heroine: Samiramgert (citadel of Semiramis), Samiramsue (canal of Semiramis).

How far can we recognize a historical germ in the legends of Semiramis? We are not quite sure whether Herodotus regarded her as an Assyrian or a Babylonian queen, since, according to I., 184, she might have " ruled over Babylon" from Nineveh. Yet we infer that because Herodotus regarded Nitocris as a Babylonian he would assign the same nationality to Semiramis. The later Greek version, however, regards her as an Assyrian. The statements of Ctesias, that this queen built Babylon, give no evidence as to her date, for the founding of the city dates from the halfhistoric period before Ḫammurabi. Moreover it is impossible that she should have built Babylon and have been, at the same time, the wife of the founder of Nineveh; for the latter was built by Babylonian colonists many centuries after the founding of the former. The worthlessness of the statements of Ctesias concerning Semiramis finds a suitable illustration in the fact that he attributes the Behistan Inscription of Darius to the work of this queen.

Much more definite is the statement of our historian that Semiramis lived five generations before Nitocris.