herodotus

*****178. Cyrus, so soon as he had made subject to himself all other partsof the mainland, proceeded to attack the Assyrians. Now Assyria hasdoubtless many other great cities, but the most famous and thestrongest, and the place where the seat of their monarchy had beenestablished after Nineveh was destroyed, was Babylon; which was a citysuch as I shall say.--It lies in a great plain, and in size it is suchthat each face measures one hundred and twenty furlongs,[177] theshape of the whole being square; thus the furlongs of the circuit ofthe city amount in all to four hundred and eighty. Such is the size ofthe city of Babylon, and it had a magnificence greater than all othercities of which we have knowledge. First there runs round it a trenchdeep and broad and full of water; then a wall fifty royal cubits inthickness and two hundred cubits in height: now the royal cubit islarger by three fingers than the common cubit.[178] 179. I must alsotell in addition to this for what purpose the earth was used, whichwas taken out of the trench, and in what manner the wall was made. Asthey dug the trench they made the earth which was carried out of theexcavation into bricks, and having moulded enough bricks they bakedthem in kilns; and then afterwards, using hot asphalt for mortar andinserting reed mats at every thirty courses of brickwork, they builtup first the edges of the trench and then the wall itself in the samemanner: and at the top of the wall along the edges they built chambersof one story facing one another; and between the rows of chambers theyleft space to drive a four-horse chariot. In the circuit of the wallthere are set a hundred gates made of bronze throughout, and the gatepostsand lintels likewise. Now there is another city distant fromBabylon a space of eight days' journey, of which the name is Is; andthere is a river there of no great size, and the name of the river isalso Is, and it sends its stream into the river Euphrates. This riverIs throws up together with its water lumps of asphalt in greatabundance, and thence was brought the asphalt for the wall of Babylon.180. Babylon then was walled in this manner; and there are twodivisions of the city; for a river whose name is Euphrates parts it inthe middle. This flows from the land of the Armenians and is large anddeep and swift, and it flows out into the Erythraian sea. The wallthen on each side has its bends[179] carried down to the river, andfrom this point the return walls stretch along each bank of the streamin the form of a rampart of baked bricks: and the city itself is fullof houses of three and four stories, and the roads by which it is cutup run in straight lines, including the cross roads which lead to theriver; and opposite to each road there were set gates in the rampartwhich ran along the river, in many in number as the ways,[180] andthese also were of bronze and led like the ways[181] to the riveritself. 181. This wall then which I have mentioned is as it were a