Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/187

Rh scarce perceptible. They afterwards flowed into the Euphrates, whence they came. The gardens of Semiramis, which astonished Asia several ages after, were only a feeble imitation of these ancient prodigies; for in the time of Semiramis, everything began to degenerate among men and women.

But what was more admirable in Babylon, and eclipsed everything else, was the only daughter of the king, named Formosanta. It was from her pictures and statues that, in succeeding times, Praxiteles sculptured his Aphrodite, and the Venus of Medicis. Heavens! what a difference between the original and the copies! So that King Belus was prouder of his daughter than of his kingdom. She was eighteen years old. It was necessary she should have a husband worthy of her; but where was he to be found? An ancient oracle had ordained that Formosanta could not belong to any but him who could bend the bow of Nimrod.

This Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord," (Gen. x:9) had left a bow seventeen Babylonian feet in length, made of ebony, harder than the iron of Mount Caucasus, which is wrought in the forges of Derbent; and no mortal since Nimrod could bend this astonishing bow.

It was again said "that the arm which should bend this bow would kill the most terrible and ferocious lion that should be let loose in the Circus of Babylon." This was not all. The bender of the bow and the conqueror of the lion should overthrow all his rivals;