this
city, if we accept the testimony of Herodotus, were three hundred and
fifty feet high, and eighty-seven feet thick, and were strengthened by two
hundred and fifty towers, and pierced with one hundred gates of brass. The
river was lined by quays, and the two parts of the city were united by a
stone bridge, at each end of which was a fortified palace. The greatest
work of the royal architect was the new palace, with the adjoining hanging
garden--a series of terraces to resemble hills, to please his Median queen.
This palace, with the garden, was eight miles in circumference, and
splendidly decorated with statues of men and animals. Here the mighty
monarch, after his great military expeditions, solaced himself, and
dreamed of omnipotence, until a sudden stroke of madness--that form which
causes a man to mistake himself for a brute animal--sent him from his
luxurious halls into the gardens he had planted. His madness lasted seven
years, and he died, after a reign of forty-three years, B.C. 561, and
Evil-Merodach, his son, reigned in his stead.

(M173) He was put to death two years after, for lawlessness and
intemperance, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law and murderer,
Neriglissar. So rapid was the decline of the monarchy, that after a few
brief reigns Babylon was entered by the army of Cyrus, and the last king,
Bil-shar-utzur, or Bilshassar, associated with his father Nabonadius, was
slain, B.C. 538. Thus ended the Chaldean monarchy, seventeen hundred and
ninety-six years after the building of Babel by Nimrod, according to the
chronology it is most convenient to assume.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EMPIRE OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS.

(M174) The third of the great Oriental monarchies brought in contact with
the Jews was that of the Medes and Persians, which arose on the
dissolution of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. The nations we have
hitherto alluded to were either Hamite or Shemite. But our attention is
now directed to a different race, the descendants of Japhet. Madai, the
third son of Japhet, was the progenitor of the Medes, whose territory
extended from the Caspian Sea on the north, to the mountains of Persia on
the south, and from the highlands of Armenia and the chain of Tagros on
the west, to the great desert of Iran on the east. It comprised a great
variety of climate, and was intersected by mountains whose valleys were
fruitful in corn and fruits. "The finest part of