300 HISTORY OF GREECE. on the Euphrates itself. And the industry, agricultural as welj as manufacturing, of the collective population, was not less per- severing than productive: their linen, cotton, and Avoollen fabrics, and their richly ornamented carpets, were celebrated throughout all the Eastern regions. Their cotton was brought in part from islands in the Persian gulf, while the flocks of sheep tended by the Arabian nomads supplied them with wool finer even than that of Miletus or Tarentum. Besides the Chaldtean order of priests, there seem to have been among them certain other tribes with peculiar hereditary customs : thus there were three tribes, prob- ably near the mouth of the river, who restricted themselves to the eating of fish alone ; but we have no evidences of a military caste (like that in Egypt) nor any other hereditary profession. stadia, stands opposed to that of four hundred and eighty stadia, which appeal's in Herodotus. But the authority of Herodotus is, in my judgment, so much superior to that of Ktesias, that I accept the larger figure as more worthy of credit than the smaller. Sixty English miles of circuit is, doubtless, a won- der, but forty-five miles in circuit is a wonder also : granting means and will to execute the lesser of these two, the Babylonian kings can hardly bo supposed inadequate to the greater. To me the height of these artificial mountains, called walls, appears even more astonishing than their length or breadth. Yet it is curious that on this point the two eye-witnesses, Herodotus and Ktesias, both agree, with only the difference between royal cubits and common cubits. Herodotus states the height at two hundred royal cubits: Ktesias, at fifty fathoms, which are equal to two hundred common cubits (Diod. ii, 7), TO 6e vijiof, wf [in I, TrevTrjnovra bpyvtuv, wf de EVIOI TUV veurzpuv eypaipav, rnix&ir Olcarius (ad Philostratum Vit. Apollon. Tyan. i, 25) shows plausible reason for believing that the more recent writers (veuTepoi) cut down the dimensions stated by Ktesias simply because they thought such a vast height incredible. The difference between the royal cubit and the com- mon cubit, as Herodotus on this occasion informs us, was three digits in favor of the. former ; his two hundred royal cubits are thus equal to three hundred and thirty-seven feet eight inches : Ktesias has not attended to the difference between royal cubits and common cubits, and his estimate, there- fore, is lower than that of Herodotus by thirty-seven feet eight inches. On the whole, I cannot think that we are justified, either by the authority of such counter-testimony as can be produced, or by the intrinsic wonder of the case, in rejecting the dimensions of the walls of Babylon as given bj Herodotus. Qnintus Curtius states that a large proportion of the inclosed space waa net occupied by dwellings, but sown ind planted (v, 1, 26: compare Diodor
