Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/307

 ASSYRIANS. -BABYLON. ^<JJ were distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by Mount Zngros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount Ararat, by which they were separated from the Medes, and extending from thence westward and southward to the Euxine sea, the river Halys, the Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf, thus covering the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates south of Armenia, as well as Syria and Syria-Palsestine, and the territory eastward of the Halys called Ivappadokia. But the Chalda?an order of priests appear to have been peculiar to Bab- ylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian gulf. The vast, rich, and lofty temple of Belus in that city, served them at once as a place of worship and an as tronomical observatory ; and it was the paramount ascendency of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldccans, though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldoeans from the mountains near the Euxine. 1 tion of the globe) made by Eratosthenes, because it did not include in the same compartment (aQpaytf) Syria proper and Mesopotamia: he calls Ninus and Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73). The Homeric names 'Ap'tfioi, 'Epffi3ol (the first in the Iliad, ii, 783, tho second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the Oriental name of this race Aram; it seems more ancient, in the Greek habits of speech, than Syrians (see Strabo, xvi, p. 785). The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stesichorus, recognized Arabus as the son of Hermes, by Thronie, daughter of Belus (Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. Marktschcffel ; Strabo. i, p. 42). 1 Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen Obcr den Verkehr der Alien Welt, part i, Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of this conquest of Baby- lon by Chaldean barbarians from the northern mountains as a certain fact, explaining the great development of the Babylonian empire under Nabopo- lasar and Nebuchadnezzar from 630-580 u. c. ; it was, he thinks, the new Chaldaean conquerors who thus extended their dominion over Judaja and Phenicia. I agree with Volney (Chronologic des Babyloniens, oh. x, p. 215) in thinking this statement both unsupported and improbable.. Mannert seems to suppose the Chaldaans of Arabian origin (Geogr. der Gr. und Rom., part v, s. 2, ch. xii, p. 419). The passages of Strabo (xvi, p. 739) are more fa Torable to this opinion than to that of Heeren; but we make out nothing distinct respecting the Chaldxans except that they were the priestly order