The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6). Duncker Max
whom they found; others saved themselves by flight. The watch of the palace were drinking by a bright fire before the gates, which were closed. They were surprised and cut down. When the noise of the fight was heard inside the palace, the king sent to inquire what was the meaning of the tumult. But as soon as the gate was opened the Persians forced their way into the palace; the king and those around him drew their swords, but succumbed to numbers, and were killed. Meanwhile Cyrus had despatched his cavalry along the streets, sending with them men skilled in the Syrian language, who proclaimed that every one who remained in his house would be uninjured; all who showed themselves in the streets would be put to death. Thus the city quickly passed into the hands of the Persians. The gates of the citadel were opened the next morning, when the dawn of light showed them the Persians in possession of the city.71
Polyaenus gives two versions of the taking of Babylon. The Babylonians laughed at the siege, as they had provisions for many years. But Cyrus drew off the Euphrates, which flows through the middle of the city, and turned it into a neighbouring swamp. As the Babylonians were thus cut off from drinking-water, they soon opened their gates to Cyrus. The second version is different. When, in order to take Babylon, Cyrus had made a trench to receive the water of the Euphrates, which flows through the city, he led away the army from the walls. The Babylonians believed that Cyrus had abandoned the siege, and they became negligent in keeping watch on the walls. But after drawing off the water, Cyrus led the Persians through the old bed, and unexpectedly made himself master of the city.
Besides these accounts of the Greeks, proclamations of the Hebrews, which are joined on to the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, give indications on the fall of Babel. "Behold, saith Jehovah, I will dry up their sea and parch their fountains. When they are heated I will prepare a drink for them, and intoxicate them, so that they make merry, that they may sleep an everlasting sleep, and awake no more. And behold! there came mounted men. The night of my pleasure was turned to horror. The watchman wakes, the table is prepared, there is eating and drinking. Rise up, ye princes, anoint the shield. Their dwellings are set on fire, the bars are broken. One runs to meet another, and messenger to meet messenger, bringing news to the king of Babylon that his city is captured on every side; the channels are taken, the lakes they have burned with fire. Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all her idols are trampled underfoot. The whole earth rests, and is at peace, the lands break forth into joy. The cypresses are glad over thee, the cedars of Lebanon; now that thou art fallen, no one will come to cut us down."72 The kings of Babylon, like those of Asshur, used the cedars of Lebanon for their palaces; Nebuchadnezzar himself tells us that he caused cedars to be felled in Lebanon for his palace (III. 386). A later book of the Hebrews, the Book of Daniel, which was written in the first century B.C., under Antiochus Epiphanes (176-164 B.C.), about the year 167 B.C., represents Babylon as taken by the Persians during the night of a festival, but Darius, not Cyrus, is the Persian king. Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, is king of Babylon. He gives a great banquet to his thousand mighty men, and, heated by wine, causes the gold and silver vessels to be brought which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the temple at Jerusalem; and his mighty men, their wives and concubines, drink out of them, and sing songs of praise to their gods of gold and silver, brass, iron, stone, and wood. Then suddenly a hand writes letters on the wall of the palace. The king changes colour; the wise men of Babylon, the Chaldæans, the magicians, and prophets were brought, but they cannot read the writing. Then Daniel was summoned, one of the Jews whom Nebuchadnezzar brought from Babylon, who had already interpreted dreams for Nebuchadnezzar which the wise men of Babylon could not expound, and had remained true to the religion of Jehovah under all temptations. He read the words, which were Hebrew, – Mene, Tekel, Peres, – and explained them: Thy kingdom is "numbered"; thou hast been "weighed" in the balance and found wanting, because thy heart is not humbled, and thou honourest not the God in whose hand is thy breath and all thy fortunes; thy kingdom has been "divided" among the Medes and Persians. Then the king commanded to put the purple robe on Daniel, and the golden chain upon his neck, and proclaim him third in the kingdom. "But in that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldæans slain, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom."73
Only a short excerpt has come down to us of the account which Berosus gave of the capture of Babylon. "Cyrus set out from Persia with a strong force against Babylon. When Nabonetus heard of his approach, he went to meet him with his army, and they joined battle. He was defeated, and fled with a few companions into the city of the Borsippeans, where he was besieged. Cyrus took Babylon, and as he had found the city difficult to reduce, and stubborn, he gave orders to throw down the walls outside the city, and then set out against Borsippa in order to get Nabonetus into his power, by bringing the siege to an end. But Nabonetus did not wait for the city to be taken by storm; he surrendered. Cyrus treated him with kindness, and sent him from Babylon to Carmania, which he appointed to be his dwelling-place. There Nabonetus lived for the remainder of his life, and there he died." According to Eusebius, Cyrus gave the vice-royalty of Carmania to Nabonetus, and Darius took it away again.74
After all that has been observed above, the attack of Cyrus could not be unexpected by Nabonetus, and we also see from Herodotus that it had been long foreseen, and provisions for many years had been collected in Babylon – according to Xenophon there was sufficient for twenty years. We find, moreover, that the fortifications of the city had been completed; the great extent which Nebuchadnezzar had allowed for the wall of the city must have enclosed a wide breadth of country, or at any rate pastures large enough to maintain numerous herds of cattle. And Nebuchadnezzar had not merely made the metropolis the fortress and strong camp of the kingdom, which could both receive and protect the military forces, he had covered the northern edge of the Babylonian land by a fortification of a hundred feet in height and twenty in thickness, which extended from the Euphrates to the Tigris. Behind this wall were the four great canals which connected the Euphrates and Tigris; and, protected by the great wall, there lay on the Euphrates at Sepharvaim, the reservoirs by which the level of the Euphrates could be raised or lowered, and the canals fed – the basin of which Nebuchadnezzar had availed himself in building his bridge over the Euphrates, – works which Herodotus, we do not know on what authority, but very erroneously ascribes to Nitocris, a queen of Babylon. By this wall, and the canals, which it would be necessary to dam up, any attack on the heart of Babylonia from the direction of Mesopotamia would be rendered almost impossible. The Tigris after leaving the mountains of Armenia, above the ruins of Nineveh, is not difficult to cross in the summer, yet an attack from this side would encounter almost insuperable difficulties, and even if they were overcome the attacking army would be involved in a labyrinth of canals, in which the cavalry of the Persians could be of little use. Hence Babylonia could only be reached by crossing the Tigris and Euphrates below that fortification and the canals, – a difficult task. If Cyrus attempted to cross both rivers above this point, and then march down the western shore till he was below the "Median wall," he would sacrifice altogether his communication with Persia, he would have to march southwards through the Syrian desert, and then force the passage of the Euphrates, in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, i. e. in the face of the enemy's power, while he at the same time would find himself in the midst of an extensive system of canals, and of the swamps which lie along the Euphrates between Babylon and the sea (I. 300, III. 359).
Under these circumstances Cyrus could only cross the Tigris from the east, and attempt an attack below the wall which united the two rivers. This was the line which, in fact, he followed. Berosus told us that Cyrus "marched from Persia against Nabonetus," and Herodotus exhibits him as occupied for a whole summer on the Diala. His occupation there, as Herodotus describes it, is very unintelligible; the Diala was punished by being divided into 360 canals, and so made fordable. That Cyrus should punish a river is both unlikely in itself and opposed to the religious conceptions of Iran, which as we know required the greatest respect to be paid to rivers; more improbable still and indeed impossible is it in the midst of the war against Babylon. If we do not assume that the source from which Herodotus drew has wrongly brought a great work of irrigation which Cyrus undertook for the land of the Diala at some other time into connection with this war against Babylon, it must be the passage of the Tigris which is in question. What we know of the military achievements of Cyrus does not allow us to suppose that when once
Xenoph. "Cyri inst." 7, 5.
Jer. li. 31, 32, 39; Deut. Isa. xiv. 7-9; xxi. 4-9.
Dan. v. 1-31.
Beros. fragm. 14; Euseb. "Chron." 1. 42, ed. Schöne.