Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/229

 PERSIAN APPROACH TO BABYLu.i. 211 than the ancient Nineveh or the modern Mosul. 1 In addi- tion to these ramparts, natural as well as artificial, to protect the territory, populous, cultivated, productive, and offering every motive to its inhabitants to resist even the entrance of an enemy, we are told that the Babylonians were so thoroughly prepared for the inroad of Cyrus that they had accumulated a store of provisions within the city Avails for many years. Strange as it may seem, we must suppose that the king of Babylon, after all the cost and labor spent in providing defences for the territory, voluntarily neglected to avail himself of them, suffered the invader to tread down the fertile Babylonia without resistance, and merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when he arrived under the walls of the city, if the statement of Herodotus is correct. 2 And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Kunaxa against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in prepar- ation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch, thirty feet wide and eight feet deep, from the wall of Media to the river Euphra- leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close alongside of the river. Yet when the invading army arrived at this impor- tant pass, they found not a man there to defend it, and all of them marched without resistance through the narrow inlet. Cyrus the younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that his brother would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of defending Babylon : 3 instead of which, two days afterwards, 1 'O Tiyprjc [teyas re KOL ovda/nov diafSarbf ef re TTI rr]v EKpohyv (Arrian, vii, 7, 7). By which he means, that it is not fordable below the ancient Nineveh, or Mosul ; for a little above that spot, Alexander himself forded it with his army, a few days before the battle of Arbela not without very great difficulty (Arrian, iii, 7, 8; Diodor. xvii, 55). 8 Herodot. i, 1 90. &Trel 6e h/evero IXavvuv ayxov rfjf 7ro?^of, owe/?aA6v re ol Bapvliuvioi, teal eaautft'vref ry fiuxy, KaTei^tj&rjaav If TO UGTV. Just as if Babylon was as easy to be approached as Sardis, old n tmarufievoi eri irporepov rbv Kvpov OVK urpefj.i^ovra, u,73*? 6peovT aiirtv iravrl oficluf E&VEI ^i^eipeovra, Trpoeau^avro airta kriuv Kapra iro^Jiuv, 3 Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7, 14-20; Diodor. xiv. 22; Plutarch, Artaxencfis, c. 7. I follow Xenophon without hesitation, where he differs from those two latter.
 * es, a distance of twelve parasangs, or forty-five English miles,