idea of defending Babylon:  instead of which, two days afterward, Artaxerxes attacked him on an open plain of ground where there was no advantage of position on either side; though the invaders were taken rather unawares in consequence of their extreme confidence arising from recent unopposed entrance within the artificial ditch.  This anecdote is the more valuable as an illustration, because all its circumstances are transmitted to us by a discerning eye-witness.  And both the two incidents here brought into comparison demonstrate the recklessness, changefulness, and incapacity of calculation belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day—­as well as the great command of hands possessed by these kings, and their prodigal waste of human labor.  Vast walls and deep ditches are an inestimable aid to a brave and well-commanded garrison; but they cannot be made entirely to supply the want of bravery and intelligence.

In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon may have been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by Cyrus is certain.  On first setting out for this conquest, he was about to cross the river Gyndes (one of the affluents from the east which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana) when one of the sacred white horses, which accompanied him, entered the river in pure wantonness and tried to cross it by himself.  The Gyndes resented this insult and the horse was drowned:  upon which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength of the river as that women in future should pass it without wetting their knees.  Accordingly he employed his entire army, during the whole summer season, in digging three hundred and sixty artificial channels to disseminate the unit of the stream.  Such, according to Herodotus, was the incident which postponed for one year the fall of the great Babylon.  But in the next spring Cyrus and his army were before the walls, after having defeated and driven in the population who came out to fight.  These walls were artificial mountains (three hundred feet high, seventy-five feet thick, and forming a square of fifteen miles to each side), within which the besieged defied attack, and even blockade, having previously stored up several years’ provision.  Through the midst of the town, however, flowed the Euphrates.  That river which had been so laboriously trained to serve for protection, trade and sustenance to the Babylonians, was now made the avenue of their ruin.  Having left a detachment of his army at the two points where the Euphrates enters and quits the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to the higher part of its course, where an ancient Babylonian queen had prepared one of the great lateral reservoirs for carrying off in case of need the superfluity of its water.  Near this point Cyrus caused another reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by means of which he drew off the water of the