THE MATERIALS FOR OTHER CITIES. 
401 
(according to Diodorus,) he battered down ten stadia at once, 
to raise a funeral pile for his favourite Hephestion. 
Here are accounts of three successive signal depredations 
committed on these famous bulwarks; and jet we find the 
masses which remained, affording exhaustless quarries for the suc¬ 
cessors of Alexander, to erect and embattle cities after cities in 
the neighbourhood of the fallen capital. The great third wall, 
and which in fact formed the especial rampart of the palace, 
appears to owe its long preservation to that circumstance; the 
very spoilers of the city, whether in the persons of princes, 
or their delegates, during their sojourn there naturally saving 
to themselves a well-defended residence. And that subsequent 
conquerors used its secure area for a hunting-lodge, and a pre¬ 
serve for the chase, may be gathered from St. Jerome, who 
mentions that “ the Parthian monarchs kept wild animals within 
the boundaries of the castellated palace, for the pleasure of 
hunting them.” 
The first decisive sluice (if I may use the term) that was 
opened in the stupendous ruin of Babylon, and whence its 
population flowed “ as the letting out of waters,” was the 
establishment of a new city on the banks of the Tigris, by 
Seleucus Nicanor, (B. C. 812 .); which he erected out of the 
fragments of the old, and named after himself. It became the 
seat of government; and in consequence the people of the 
ancient capital transplanted themselves thither in crowds for 
the sake of employment and subsistence. Strabo gives a lively 
picture of the natural effect of these causes ; describing the 
increase of Seleucia under its successive Greek princes, and the 
corresponding mouldering away of Babylon, and its inhabitants, 
“ till (he remarks) for the most part it became a desert.” And, 
3 F 
VOL. II. 
