lth of India recalled her
from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates, _en route_ for
the remote east, but at this point her good fortune forsook her: she was
defeated by King Stratobates, and returned to her own dominions, never
again to leave them. She had set up triumphal stelae on the boundaries
of the habitable globe, in the very midst of Scythia, not far from the
Iaxartes, where, centuries afterwards, Alexander of Macedon read
the panegyric of herself which she had caused to be engraved there.
"Nature," she writes, "gave me the body of a woman, but my deeds have
put me on a level with the greatest of men. I ruled over the dominion of
Ninos, which extends eastwards to the river Hinaman, southwards to the
countries of Incense and Myrrh, and northwards as far as the Sacaa and
Sogdiani. Before my time no Assyrian had ever set eyes on the sea: I
have seen four oceans to which no mariner has ever sailed, so far remote
are they. I have made rivers to flow where I would have them, in the
places where they were needed; thus did I render fertile the barren soil
by watering it with my rivers. I raised up impregnable fortresses, and
cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. I opened a way for
the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild
beasts had never penetrated. And, amidst all these labours, I yet found
time for my pleasures and for the society of my friends." On discovering
that her son Ninyas was plotting her assassination, she at once
abdicated in his favour, in order to save him from committing a crime,
and then transformed herself into a dove; this last incident betrays the
goddess to us. Ninos and Semiramis are purely mythical, and their mighty
deeds, like those ascribed to Ishtar and Gilgames, must be placed in the
same category as those other fables with which the Babylonian legends
strive to fill up the blank of the prehistoric period.*

* The legend of Ninos and Semiramis is taken from Diodorus
Siculus, who reproduces, often word for word, the version of
Ctesias.

[Illustration: 172.jpg the dove-goddess]

Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch published in Longperier.

The real facts were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant
than those supplied by popular imagination. It would be a mistake,
however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony
and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage. It
was by d