Note 375 — Chapter XXXIII · GROWTH OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.

Herodot. i, 191. This latter portion of the story, if we may judge from the expression of Herodotus, seems to excite more doubt in his mind than all the rest, for he thinks it necessary to add, “as the residents at Babylon say,” ὡς λέγεται ὑπὸ τῶν ταύτῃ οἰκημένων. Yet if we assume the size of the place to be what he has affirmed, there seems nothing remarkable in the fact that the people in the centre did not at once hear of the capture; for the first business of the assailants would be to possess themselves of the walls and gates. It is a lively illustration of prodigious magnitude, and as such it is given by Aristotle (Polit. iii, 1, 12); who, however, exaggerates it by giving as a report that the inhabitants in the centre did not hear of the capture until the third day. No such exaggeration as this appears in Herodotus.

Xenophon, in the Cyropædia (vii, 5, 7-18), following the story that Cyrus drained off the Euphratês, represents it as effected in a manner differing from Herodotus. According to him, Cyrus dug two vast and deep ditches, one on each side round the town, from the river above the town to the river below it: watching the opportunity of a festival day in Babylon, he let the water into both of these side ditches, which fell into the main stream again below the town: hence the main stream in its passage through the town became nearly dry. The narrative of Xenophon, however, betrays itself, as not having been written from information received on the spot, like that of Herodotus; for he talks of αἱ ἄκραι of Babylon, just as he speaks of the ἄκραι of the hill-towns of Karia (compare Cyropædia, vii, 4, 1, 7, with vii, 5, 34). There were no ἄκραι on the dead flat of Babylon.