kinsmen to the Carians, for they say that Lydus and Mysus were brothers to Car. Now they do share the temple, but none who are of a different nation, though of the same language with the Carians, are allowed to share it. 172. The Caunians, in my opinion, are aboriginals, though they say they are from Crete. However, they have assimilated their language to that of the Carians, or the Carians to theirs; for this I can not determine with certainty. Their customs are totally distinct from those of other nations, even from the Carians; for they account it very becoming for men, women, and boys to meet together to drink according to their age and intimacy. They had formerly erected temples to foreign deities, but afterward, when they changed their minds (for they resolved to have none but their own national deities), all the Caunians armed themselves, both young and old, and, beating the air with their spears, marched in a body to the Calindian confines, and said they were expelling strange gods. They then have such customs. 173. The Lycians were orig. inally sprung from Crete, for in ancient time Crete was en tirely in the possession of barbarians. But a dispute having alisen between Sarpedon and Minos, sons of Europa, respect, ing the sovereign power, when Minos got the upper hand in the struggle, he drove out Sarpedon with his partisans; and they, being expelled, came to the land of Milyas in Asia; for the country which the Lycians now occupy was anciently called Milyas; but the Milyans were then called Solymi. So long as Sarpedon reigned over them, they went by the name of Termilæ, which they brought with them, and the Lycians are still called by that name by their neighbors. But when Lycus, son of Pandion, who was likewise driven out by his brother Ægeus, came from Athens, the Termilæ, under Sarpedon, in course of time, got to be called Lycians after him. Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian; but they have one peculiar to themselves, in which they differ from all other nations; for they take their name from their mothers and not from their fathers; so that if any one ask another who he is, he will describe himself by his mother's side, and reckon up his maternal ancestry in the female line. And if a free-born woman marry a slave, the children are accounted of pure birth; but if a man who is a citizen, even though of high rank, mar

ry a foreigner or cohabit with a concubine, the children are infamous.

174. Now the Carians were subdued by Harpagus without having done any memorable action in their own defense; and not only the Carians, but all the Grecians that inhabit those parts, behaved themselves with as little courage; and among others settled there are the Cnidians, colonists from the Lacedæmonians, whose territory juts on the sea, and is called the Triopean; but the region of Bybassus commenced from the peninsula, for all Cnidia, except a small space, is surrounded by water (for the Ceramic gulf bounds it on the north, and on the south the sea by Syme and Rhodes): now this small space, which is about five stades in breadth, the Cnidians, wishing to make their territory insular, designed to dig through while Harpagus was subduing Ionia; for the whole of their dominions were within the isthmus; and where the Cnidian territory terminates toward the continent, there is the isthmus that they designed to dig through. But as they were carrying on the work with great diligence, the workmen appeared to be wounded to a greater extent and in a more strange manner than usual, both in other parts of the body, and particularly in the eyes, by the chipping of the rock; they therefore sent deputies to Delphi to inquire what was the cause of the obstruction; and, as the Cnidians say, the Pythian answered as follows in trimeter verse: "Build not a tower on the isthmus, nor dig it through, for Jove would have made it an island had he so willed." When the Pythia had given this answer, the Cnidians desisted from their work, and surrendered without resistance to Harpagus as soon as he approached with his army. 175. The Pedasians were situate inland above Halicarnassus; when any mischief is about to befall them or their neighbors, the priestess of Minerva has a long beard: this has three times occurred. Now these were the only people about Caria who opposed Harpagus for any time, and gave him much trouble by fortifying a mountain called Lyda. 176. After some time, however, the Pedasians were subdued. The Lycians, when Harpagus marched his army toward the Xanthian plain, went out to meet him, and, engaging with very inferior numbers, displayed great feats of valor; but, being defeated and shut up within their city,

they collected their wives, children, property, and servants within the citadel, and then set fire to it and burned it to the ground. When they had done this, and engaged themselves by the strongest oaths, all the Xanthians went out and died fighting. Of the modern Lycians, who are said to be Xanthians, all, except eighty families, are strangers; but these eighty families happened at the time to be away from home, and so survived. Thus Harpagus got possession of Xanthus and Caunia almost in the same manner; for the Caunians gen erally followed the example of the Lycians.

177. Harpagus therefore reduced the lower parts of Asia, but Cyrus conquered the upper parts, subduing every nation without exception. The greatest part of these I shall pass by without notice; but I will make mention of those which gave him most trouble, and are most worthy of being recorded.

178. When Cyrus had reduced all the other parts of the continent, he attacked the Assyrians. Now Assyria contains many large cities, but the most renowned and the strongest, and where the seat of government was established after the destruction of Nineveh, was Babylon, which is of the following description. The city stands in a spacious plain, and is quadrangular, and shows a front on every side of one hundred and twenty stades; these stades make up the sum of four hundred and eighty in the whole circumference. Such is the size of the city of Babylon. It was adorned in a manner surpassing any city we are acquainted with. In the first place, a moat deep, wide, and full of water, runs entirely around it; next, there is a wall fifty royal cubits in breadth, and in height two hundred; but the royal cubit is larger than the common one by three fingers' breadth. 179. And here I think I ought to explain how the earth taken out of the moat was consumed, and in what manner the wall was built. As they dug the moat they made bricks of the earth that was taken out, and when they had moulded a sufficient number they baked them in kilns. Then, making use of hot asphalt for cement, and laying wattled reeds between the thirty bottom courses of bricks, they first built up the sides of the moat, and afterward the wall itself in the same manner; and on the top of the wall, at the edges, they built dwellings of one story, fronting each other, and they left a space between these dwellings.

sufficient for turning a chariot with four horses. In the circumference of the wall there were a hundred gates, all of brass, as also are the posts and lintels. Eight days' journey from Babylon stands another city, called Is, on a small river of the same name, which discharges its stream into the Euphrates. Now this river brings down with its water many lumps of bitumen, from whence the bitumen used in the wall of Babylon was brought. 180. In this manner Babylon was encompassed with a wall; and the city consists of two divisions, for a river, called the Euphrates, separates it in the middle: this river, which is broad, deep, and rapid, flows from Armenia, and falls into the Red Sea. The wall, therefore, on either bank, has an elbow carried down to the river; from thence, along the curvatures of each bank of the river, runs a wall of baked bricks. The city itself, which is full of houses three and four stories high, is cut up into straight streets, as well all the other as the transverse ones that lead to the river. At the end of each street a little gate is formed in the wall along the river-side, in number equal to the streets; and they are all made of brass, and lead down to the edge of the river. 181. This outer wall, then, is the chief defense, but another wall runs round within, not much inferior to the other in strength, though narrower. In the middle of each division of the city fortified buildings were erected; in one, the royal palace, with a spacious and strong inclosure, brazengated; and in the other, the precinct of Jupiter Belus, which in my time was still in existence, a square building of two stades on every side. In the midst of this precinct is built a solid tower of one stade both in length and breadth, and on this tower rose another, and another upon that, to the number of eight; and an ascent to these is outside, running spirally round all the towers. About the middle of the ascent there is a landing-place and seats to rest on, on which those who go up sit down and rest themselves; and in the uppermost tower stands a spacious temple, and in this temple is placed, handsomely furnished, a large couch, and by its side a table of gold. No statue has been erected within it, nor does any mortal pass the night there, except only a native woman, chosen by the god out of the whole nation, as the Chaldeans, who are priests of this deity, say. 182. These same priests assert, though I can not credit what they say, that the god himself

comes to the temple and reclines on the bed, in the same manner as the Egyptians say happens at Thebes in Egypt, for there also a woman lies in the temple of Theban Jupiter, and both are said to have no intercourse with men; in the same manner also the priestess who utters the oracles at Pataræ in Lycia, when the god is there, for there is not an oracle there at all times, but when there she is shut up during the night in the temple with the god. 183. There is also another temple below, within the precinct at Babylon; in it is a large golden statue of Jupiter seated, and near it is placed a large table of gold, the throne also and the step are of gold, which together weigh eight hundred talents, as the Chaldæans affirm. Outside the temple is a golden altar, and another large altar, where full-grown sheep are sacrificed; for on the golden altar only sucklings may be offered. On the great altar the Chaldæans consume yearly a thousand talents of frankincense when they celebrate the festival of this god. There was also at that time within the precincts of this temple a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high: I, indeed, did not see it; I only relate what is said by the Chaldæans. Darius, son of Hystaspes, formed a design to take away this statue, but dared not do so; but Xerxes, son of Darius, took it, and killed the priest who forbade him to remove it. Thus, then, this temple was adorned; and, besides, there are many private offerings.

184. There were many others who reigned over Babylon, whom I shall mention in my Assyrian history, who beautified the walls and temples, and among them were two women. The first of these, named Semiramis, lived five generations before the other. She raised mounds along the plain which are worthy of admiration; for, before, the river used to overflow the whole plain like a sea. 185. But the other, who was queen next after her, and whose name was Nitocris (she was much more sagacious than the queen before her), in the first place, left monuments of herself which I shall presently describe; and, in the next place, when she saw the power of the Medes growing formidable and restless, and that, among other cities, Nineveh was captured by them, she took every possible precaution for her own defense. First of all, with respect to the river Euphrates, which before ran in a straight line, and which flows through the middle of the city, this, by