The Good Book (40 page)

35. The Phocaeans manned all their vessels, sixty in number, and met their enemy on the Sardinian Sea.

36. In the battle that followed the Phocaeans were victorious, but their success was an empty victory;

37. They lost forty ships, and the twenty which remained came out of the engagement too damaged for use.

38. The Phocaeans therefore returned to Alalia, and taking their wives and children on board, with such portion of their goods and chattels as the vessels could bear, sailed to Rhegium.

39. The Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, who had captured many Phocaeans from the crews of the forty vessels that were destroyed, landed their captives on the coast and stoned them all to death.

40. Afterwards the people of Agylla, who had been so horrified by this mass murder, instituted a custom of honouring the dead Phocaeans with magnificent funeral rites, and solemn games both gymnastic and equestrian.

41. Such, then, was the fate that befell the Phocaean prisoners. The other Phocaeans, who had fled to Rhegium, after a while founded the city called Vela, in the district of Oenotria. Thus fared it with the men of the city of Phocaea in Ionia.

Chapter 17

  1. They of Teos did and suffered almost the same; for they too, when Harpagus raised his mound against their walls, took ship and sailed to Thrace, and founded there the city of Abdera.

  2. The site was one which Timesius of Clazomenae had previously tried to colonise, but without success, for he was expelled by the Thracians.

  3. Still the Teians of Abdera regard him to this day as a hero.

  4. Of all the Ionians these two states alone, rather than submit to slavery, forsook their fatherland.

  5. The others resisted Harpagus no less bravely than those who fled their country, and performed many feats of arms, each fighting in their own defence,

  6. But one after another they were defeated; the cities were taken, and the inhabitants submitted, remaining in their respective countries, and obeying the behests of their new lords.

  7. Thus was continental Ionia once more reduced to servitude; and when the Ionians of the islands saw their brethren on the mainland subjugated, they also, dreading the like, gave themselves up to Cyrus.

  8. It was while the Ionians were in this distress, but still, amid it all, held their meetings, as of old, at the Panionium,

  9. That Bias of Priene, who was present at the festival, recommended a project of the highest wisdom, which would, had it been embraced, have enabled the Ionians to become the happiest and most flourishing of the Greeks.

10. He exhorted them ‘to join in one body, set sail for Sardinia, and there found a single Pan-Ionic city; so they would escape from slavery and rise to great fortune,

11. ‘Being masters of the largest island in the world, exercising dominion even beyond its bounds; whereas if they stayed in Ionia, he saw no prospect of their ever recovering their freedom.’

12. Such was the counsel Bias gave the Ionians in their affliction. Before their misfortunes began, Thales, a man of Miletus, of Phoenician descent, had recommended a different plan.

He counselled them to establish a single seat of government, and nominated Teos as the fittest place for it; ‘for that,’ he said, ‘was the centre of Ionia.

13. ‘Their other cities might still continue to enjoy their own laws, just as if they were independent states.’ This also was good advice.

14. The fall of Ionia was the harbinger of Harpagus’ conquest of the rest of the independent people in the lower parts of Asia, among them the Carians, the Caunians and the Lycians.

15. Of these nations, the Carians submitted to Harpagus without performing any brilliant exploits. Nor did the Greeks who dwelt in Caria behave with any greater gallantry.

16. Above Halicarnassus, and further from the coast, were the Pedasians. They alone, of all the dwellers in Caria, resisted Harpagus for a while, and gave him much trouble,

17. Maintaining themselves in a certain mountain called Lida, which they had fortified; but in course of time they also were forced to submit.

18. When Harpagus, after these successes, led his forces into the Xanthian plain, the Lycians of Xanthus went out to fight him:

19. And though but a small band against a numerous host, they engaged in battle, and performed many glorious exploits.

20. Overpowered at last, and forced within their walls, they collected into the citadel their wives and children, all their treasures, and their slaves;

21. And having so done, set fire to the building, and burnt it to the ground with all in it.

22. After this, they bound themselves together by a bond of brotherhood, and sallying forth against the enemy, died sword in hand, not one escaping.

23. Now these were the auguries of the future: that the best of the Greeks would rather die in freedom than live in servitude; and the Persians should have taken warning from this.

Chapter 18

  1. While the lower parts of Asia were brought under by Harpagus, Cyrus in person subjected the upper regions, conquering every nation, and not suffering one to escape.

  2. When he had brought the rest of the continent under his control, he turned his attention to the Assyrians, and made war on them.

  3. Assyria possessed a vast number of great cities, of which the most renowned and strongest at this time was Babylon, which had been made the seat of government after the fall of Nineveh.

  4. The city stood on a broad plain, and was an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the entire circuit was four hundred and eighty furlongs.

  5. While such was its size, in magnificence there was no other city that approached it.

  6. It was surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water,

  7. Behind which rose a wall fifty royal cubits in width, and two hundred in height.  

  8. The wall was built from the spoil of the moat, made directly into bricks in kilns beside the excavation.

  9. The cement for the wall was hot bitumen, with a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks.

10. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another,

11. Leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the wall were a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts.

12. The city was divided into two by the river which runs through the middle: the Euphrates, a broad, deep, swift stream which rises in Armenia, and empties itself into the Erythraean Sea.

13. The city wall was brought down on both sides to the edge of the stream: thence, from the corners of the wall, there was carried along each bank of the river a fence of burnt bricks.

14. The houses were mostly three and four stories high; the streets all ran in straight lines, not only those parallel to the river, but also the cross streets which led down to the waterside.

15. At the river end of these cross streets were low gates in the fence that skirted the stream, which were, like the great gates in the outer wall, of brass, and opened on the water.

16. The outer wall was the main defence of the city. There was, however, a second, inner wall, of less thickness than the first, but very little inferior to it in strength.

17. The palace of the kings was surrounded by a wall of great strength and size, with gates of solid brass.

18. In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which stood a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight.

19. The ascent to the top was on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. About halfway up one found seats, so that one could rest on one’s way to the summit.

20. Many sovereigns have ruled over Babylon, and lent their aid to the building of its walls and the adornment of its beauties.

21. Among them two were women. Of these, the earlier, called Semiramis, held the throne five generations before the later princess.

22. She raised embankments in the plain near Babylon to control the river, which till then used to overflow and flood the whole country round about.

23. The later of the two queens, whose name was Nitocris, a wiser princess than her predecessor, not only left behind her great works of building which enhanced the city, but also a cunning defence against interference from the Medes.

24. Observing the great power and restless enterprise of the Medes, who had taken so large a number of cities, and among them Nineveh,

25. And expecting to be attacked in her turn, Nitocris made all pos­­sible exertions to increase the defences of her empire.

26. And first, whereas the River Euphrates, which traverses the city, formerly ran with a straight course to Babylon,

27. She, by certain excavations at a distance upstream, rendered it so winding that it comes three times within view of the same village in Assyria called Ardericea;

28. And to this day those who go from the Mediterranean coast to Babylon, having reached the Euphrates to sail down it, touch three times on three different days at this very place.

29. Nitocris also made an embankment along each side of the river, wonderful both for breadth and height,

30. And dug a basin for a lake a great way above Babylon, close alongside the stream, which was sunk everywhere to the point where they came to water,

31. And was of such breadth that the whole circuit measured four hundred and twenty furlongs.

32. When the excavation was finished, Nitocris had stones brought, and bordered the entire margin of the reservoir with them.

33. These two things were done, the river made to wind and the lake excavated, so that the stream might be slacker by reason of the number of curves,

34. And the voyage be rendered circuitous, and that at the end of the voyage it might be necessary to skirt the lake and so make a long round.

35. All these works were on that side of Babylon where the passes lay, and the roads into Media were the straightest,

36. And the aim of the queen in making them was to prevent the Medes from holding intercourse with the Babylonians, and so to keep them ignorant of her affairs.

Chapter 19

  1. The expedition of Cyrus was undertaken against the son of this princess, who bore the same name as his father, Labynetus, and was king of the Assyrians.

  2. Cyrus introduced the policy whereby the Persian kings, when they go to war, are always supplied with provisions carefully prepared at home, and with cattle of their own.

  3. Water too from the River Choaspes, which flows by Susa, is taken with them for their drink, as that is the only water that the kings of Persia taste.

  4. Wherever the king travels, he is attended by a number of four-wheeled cars drawn by mules,

  5. In which the Choaspes water, ready boiled for use, and stored in flagons of silver, is moved with him from place to place.

  6. Cyrus on his way to Babylon came to the banks of the Gyndes, a stream which, rising in the Matienian mountains, runs through the country of the Dardanians, and empties itself into the River Tigris.

  7. The Tigris, after receiving the Gyndes, flows on by the city of Opis, and discharges its waters into the Erythraean Sea.

  8. When Cyrus reached the Gyndes, which could only be passed in boats, one of the prized white horses accompanying his march, full of boldness and high mettle, walked into the water, and tried to cross by himself;

  9. But the current seized him, swept him along with it, and drowned him in its depths.

10. Cyrus, enraged by this, resolved to break the river’s strength so that in future even children should cross it easily without wetting their tunics.

11. Accordingly he delayed his attack on Babylon for a time, and dividing his army into two parts, marked out by ropes one hundred and eighty trenches on each side of the Gyndes, leading off from it in all directions.

12. Setting his army to dig, some on one side of the river, some on the other, he accomplished his intention by the aid of so many hands, but not without thereby losing the whole summer season.

13. Having thus wreaked his vengeance on the Gyndes by dispersing it through three hundred and sixty channels, Cyrus, with the first approach of the ensuing spring, marched forward against Babylon.

14. The Babylonians, camped outside their walls, awaited his coming. A battle was fought at a short distance from the city, in which the Babylonians were defeated, whereupon they withdrew within their defences.

15. Here they shut themselves up, and made light of his siege, having laid in a store of provisions for many years in preparation against this attack;

16. For when they saw Cyrus conquering nation after nation, they were convinced that he would never stop, and that their turn would come.

17. Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity, as time went on and he made no progress against the place.