BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 57 



national tradition respecting him. Nimrod, 

 as we shall presently see, was a popular 

 personage in Chaldeea in the first centuries 

 of our era. It is difficult to unravel, amidst 

 the confusion of ideas which then prevailed 

 in the East, the origin of legends so de- 

 nuded of true character, and over which 

 is thrown that general level of mere plati- 

 tude which gives such a singular air of 

 monotony and conventionalism to all the 

 traditions transmitted to us by Arabian 

 writers. 



Certainly, if either of these facts were an 

 isolated one, one might hesitate to draw 

 from it any deduction. But they form alto- 

 gether a mass of evidence which appears to 

 me most solid. One subtle reply may be 

 true, but ten subtle replies cannot be so. 

 I must therefore consider it as an esta- 

 blished fact, that each one of the personages 

 I have enumerated, all of whom are given 

 in "The Agriculture" as ancient Babylo- 

 nian sages, is the representative of one of 

 those classes of apocryphal writings of Ba- 



