400 
RUINS OF BABYLON. 
when the temple was sacked, and its ministration in a manner 
destroyed by Xerxes, then we may suppose that the distressed 
inhabitants, finding their occupation gone, would emigrate to 
the more busy shore. 
With regard to Babylon in its greatest dimensions, I have 
already described it rather as an embattled district than a merely- 
fortified town. I have given the height of the walls as recorded 
by Herodotus ; the number of which, according to a fragment 
of Ctesias quoted by Diodorus Siculus, were in three lines, in¬ 
cluding the high exterior rampart of the castellated palace. But 
this original magnitude did not continue many years ; Cyrus, it 
is said, demolished the whole of the outer wall soon after he 
had possessed himself of the empire ; probably, when he re¬ 
moved the seat of government to Susa. A necessary precaution 
in case of revolt; so vast an embattled area, by its own agri¬ 
cultural produce, having afforded the last Babylonian monarch 
the means of withstanding him two years, and might have done 
so for twenty more, had not Cyrus surprised the city by stra¬ 
tagem. Such long sieges, Troy, for instance, prove the utility 
of arable ground within the walls; and seem to give a sufficient 
reason for the otherwise incredible dimensions of all the capital 
cities of ancient Asia. Consequently, when these ranges of wall 
were circumscribed, something more was done to the captured 
town than narrowing its limits ; the resources of the people were 
lessened in exact proportion to every acre of ground they lost 
between their habitations and the old boundary. Darius Hys- 
taspes, not satisfied with his predecessor’s compression of Ba¬ 
bylon to its second line of defence, in less than fifty years 
afterwards, took away its gates, and lowered the wall to fifty 
cubits. In that state, most probably, Alexander found it, when 
