of two different cities, built on different motives, and with different
principles; the one, self-love, and a desire of temporal advantages,
carried even to the contemning of the Deity; the other, the love of God,
even to the contemning of one's self.

(M156) NINUS. I have already observed, that most of the profane authors
look upon him as the first founder of the Assyrian empire, and for that
reason ascribe to him a great part of his father Nimrod's or Belus's
actions.

Having a design to enlarge his conquests, the first thing he did was to
prepare troops and officers capable of promoting his designs.(972) And
having received powerful succours from the Arabians his neighbours, he
took the field, and in the space of seventeen years conquered a vast
extent of country, from Egypt as far as India and Bactriana, which he did
not then venture to attack.

At his return, before he entered upon any new conquests, he conceived the
design of immortalizing his name by the building of a city answerable to
the greatness of his power; he called it Nineveh, and built it on the
eastern banks of the Tigris.(973) Possibly he did no more than finish the
work his father had begun. His design, says Diodorus, was to make Nineveh
the largest and noblest city in the world, and to put it out of the power
of those that came after him ever to build or hope to build such another.
Nor was he deceived in his view; for never did any city come up to the
greatness and magnificence of this: it was one hundred and fifty stadia
(or eighteen miles three quarters) in length, and ninety stadia (or eleven
miles and one quarter) in breadth; and consequently was an oblong square.
Its circumference was four hundred and eighty stadia, or sixty miles. For
this reason we find it said in the prophet Jonah, "That Nineveh was an
exceeding great city, of three days' journey;"(974) which is to be
understood of the whole circuit, or compass of the city.(975) The walls of
it were a hundred feet high, and of so considerable a thickness, that
three chariots might go abreast upon them with ease. They were fortified,
and adorned with fifteen hundred towers two hundred feet high.

After he had finished this prodigious work, he resumed his expedition
against the Bactrians. His army, according to the relation of Ctesias,
consisted of seventeen hundred thousand foot, two hundred thousand horse,
and about sixteen thousand chariots armed with scythes. Diodorus adds,
that this ou