Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/312

 296 HISTORY OF GREECE. such as Herodotus hardly dares to particularize. The courtly produced no trees except the date-palm, which was turned to ac- count in many different ways, and from the fruit of which, hoth copious and of extraordinary size, wine as well as bread were made. 1 Moreover, Babylonia was still more barren of stone than of wood, so that buildings as well as walls were constructed al- most entirely of brick, for which the earth was well adapted ; while a flow of mineral bitumen, found near the town and river of Is, higher up the Euphrates, served for cement. Such perse- vering and systematic labor, applied for the purpose of irriga- tion, excites our astonishment ; yet the description of what was done for defence is still more imposing. Babylon, traversed in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded by walls three hundred feet in height, seventy-five feet in thickness, and compos- ing a square of which each side was one hundred and twenty stadia (or nearly fifteen English miles) in length : around the outside of the walls was a broad and deep moat from whence the material for the bricks composing them had been excavated; while one hundred brazen gates served for ingress and egress. Besides, there was an interior wall less thick, but still very strong ; and as a still farther obstruction to invaders from the north and north-east, another high and thick wall was built at some miles from the city, across much of the space between the Euphrates and the Tigris, called the wall of Media, seemingly a little to the north of that point where the two rivers most nearly approach lo each other, and joining the Tigris on its west bank. Of the houses many were three or four stories high, and the broad and straight streets, unknown in a Greek town until the distribution 1 About the d:ite-palins (QoiviKCf) in the ancient Babylonia, sec Tlieo- phrastus, Hist. Plant, ii, 6, 2-6 ; Xcnoph. Cyrop. vii, 5, 12 ; Anal), ii, 3, 5 ; Diodor. ii, 53 : there were some which bore no fruit, but which afforded good wood for house-purposes and furniture. Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and produce of the soil in Babylonia as Herodotus, though the two hundred-fold, and some- times three hundred-fold, which was stated to the latter as the produce of tho land in grain, appears in his statement cut down to fifty-fold, or one hundred- fold (Hist. Plant, viii, 7, 4). Respecting the numerous useful puiposes for which the date-palm wai made to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and sixty), M* Btrabo, xiv, p. 742; Ammian. Marccll. xxiv, 3.