146 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



Lydian king of the family of the Heraclides. 

 Notwithstanding, he makes him the son of Be- 

 lus : so much confusion had there been in the 

 traditions. Though he speaks of Semiramis as one 

 of the queens who left great monuments in Baby- 

 lon, he only places her seven generations before 

 Cyrus. 



Hellanicus, who was cotemporary with Hero- 

 dotus, far from allowing that Semiramis had 

 built any thing at Babylon, attributes the foun- 

 dation of that city to Chaldseus, the fourteenth 

 successor of Ninus*. Berosus, a Babylonian 

 and a priest, who wrote scarcely a hundred and 

 twenty years after Herodotus, gives an astounding 

 antiquity to Babylon ; but it is to Nabuchodono- 

 sor, a prince comparatively very modern, that he 

 attributes the principal monuments f . Regard- 

 ing even Cyrus, a prince so remarkable, and whose 

 history must have been so well known and so 

 popular, Herodotus, who only lived a hundred 

 years after him, owns that, in his time, there al- 

 ready existed three different opinions ; and, in 

 fact, sixty years later, Xenophon gives a biogra- 

 phy of this prince quite at variance with that of 

 Herodotus. 



* Stephen of Byzantium, at the word Chaldosi. 

 t Josephus, (Contra App,) lib. i. cap. xix. 



