customs of the Babylonians; while in a fourth he
describes the rites connected with the worship of the chief goddess of
the Babylonians, which impress Herodotus, who failed to appreciate their
mystic significance, as shameful. We have no reason to believe that
Ctesias' account of the Assyrian monarchy, under which he, like
Herodotus, included Babylonia, contained any reference to the religion
at all. What he says about Babylonia and Assyria served merely as an
introduction to Persian history--the real purpose of his work--and the
few fragments known chiefly through Diodorus and Eusebius, deal
altogether with the succession of dynasties. As is well known, the lists
of Ctesias have fallen into utter discredit by the side of the
ever-growing confidence in the native traditions as reported by Berosus.

The loss of the latter's history of Babylon is deplorable indeed; its
value would have been greater than the history of Herodotus, because it
was based, as we know, on the records and documents preserved in
Babylonian temples. How much of the history dealt with the religion of
the people, it is difficult to determine, but the extracts of it found
in various writers show that starting, like the Old Testament, with the
beginning of things, Berosus gave a full account of the cosmogony of the
Babylonians. Moreover, the early history of Babylonia being largely
legendary, as that of every other nation, tales of the relations
existing between the gods and mankind--relations that are always close
in the earlier stages of a nation's history--must have abounded in the
pages of Berosus, even if he did not include in his work a special
section devoted to an account of the religion that still was practiced
in his days. The quotations from Berosus in the works of Josephus are
all of a historical character; those in Eusebius and Syncellus, on the
contrary, deal with the religion and embrace the cosmogony of the
Babylonians, the account of a deluge brought on by the gods, and the
building of a tower. It is to be noted, moreover, that the quotations we
have from Berosus are not direct, for while it is possible, though not
at all certain, that Josephus was still able to consult the works of
Berosus, Eusebius and Syncellus refer to Apollodorus, Abydenus, and
Alexander Polyhistor as their authorities for the statements of Berosus.
Passing in this way through several hands, the authoritative value of
the comparatively paltry extracts preserved, i