The military successes of the Babylonians were accompanied with needless violence, and with outrages not unusual in the East, which the historian must nevertheless regard as at once crimes and follies.  The transplantation of conquered races—­a part of the policy of Assyria which the Chaldaeans adopted—­may perhaps have been morally defensible, notwithstanding the sufferings which it involved.  But the mutilations of prisoners, the weary imprisonments, the massacre of non-combatants, the refinement of cruelty shown in the execution of children before the eyes of their fathers—­these and similar atrocities, which are recorded of the Babylonians, are wholly without excuse, since they did not so much terrify as exasperate the conquered nations, and thus rather endangered than added strength or security to the empire.  A savage and inhuman temper is betrayed by these harsh punishments—­a temper common in Asiatics, but none the less reprehensible on that account—­one that led its possessors to sacrifice interest to vengeance, and the peace of a kingdom to a tiger-like thirst for blood.  Nor was this cruel temper shown only towards the subject nations and captives taken in war.  Babylonian nobles trembled for their heads if they incurred by a slight fault the displeasure of the monarch; and even the most powerful class in the kingdom, the learned and venerable “Chaldaeans,” ran on one occasion the risk of being exterminated, because they could not expound a dream which the king had forgotten.  If a monarch displeased his court, and was regarded as having a bad disposition, it was not thought enough simply to make away with him, but he was put to death by torture.  Among recognized punishments were cutting to pieces and casting into a heated furnace.  The houses of offenders were pulled down and made into dunghills.  These practices imply a “violence” and cruelty beyond the ordinary Oriental limit; and we cannot be surprised that when final judgment was denounced against Babylon, it was declared to be sent, in a great measure, “because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land-of the city, and all that dwelt therein.”

It is scarcely necessary to add that the Babylonians were a proud people.  Pride is unfortunately the invariable accompaniment of success, in the nation, if not in the individual; and the sudden elevation of Babylon from a subject to a dominant power must have been peculiarly trying, more especially to the Oriental temperament.  The spirit which culminated in Nebuchadnezzar, when, walking in the palace of his kingdom, and surveying the magnificent buildings which he had raided on every side from the plunder of the conquered nations, and by the labor of their captive bands, he exclaimed, “Is not the great Babylon which I have built by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty?”—­was rife in the people generally, who, naturally enough, believed themselves superior to every other nation upon the earth.  “I am, and there is none else beside me,” was the thought, if not the speech, of the people, whose arrogancy was perhaps somewhat less offensive than that of the Assyrians, but was quite as intense and as deep-seated.