ancient capital. Struck by the beauty of its monuments and the
advantages of its site, ALEXANDER projected the restoration of Babylon, and
proposed to make it his habitual residence; but he died before his
intention could be carried out, and SELEUCUS NICATOR preferred to build a
town which should be called after himself, and should at least perpetuate
his name. The new city had as many as six hundred thousand inhabitants.
Under the Parthians Ctesiphon succeeded to Seleucia, to be replaced in its
turn by Bagdad, the Arab metropolis of the caliphs. This latest comer upon
the scene would have equalled its predecessors in magnificence had the
routes of commerce not changed so greatly since the commencement of the
modern era, and, above all, had the Turks not been masters of the country.
There can be no doubt that the next generation will see the civilization of
the West repossess itself of the fertile plains in which it was born and
nursed, and a railway carried from the shores of the Mediterranean to those
of the Persian Gulf. Such a road would be the most direct route from Europe
to India, and its construction would awake Chaldaea to the feverish activity
of our modern life. Peopled, irrigated, and tilled into her remotest
corners, she would again become as prolific as of old. Her station upon the
wayside would soon change her towns into cities as populous as those of
Nebuchadnezzar, and we may even guess that her importance in the future
would reduce her past to insignificance, and would make her capital such a
Babylon as the world has not yet seen.

NOTES:

[57] TH. NOELDEKE, _Histoire litteraire de l'ancien Testament_, French
version. See chapter vii.

[58] This account of the fabulous origin of civilization in Chaldaea and
Assyria will be found in the second book of BEROSUS. See _Fragmenta
Historicorum Graecorum_ of Ch. MUeLLER, vol. i. fr. 4, 13. Book i. is
consecrated to the cosmogony, Book iii. to the Second Chaldee Empire.

[59] _Genesis_ xiv.

[60] F. LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p. 24. SMITH
(_Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 224) puts the capture of Susa in 645, and thus
arrives at the date 2280 B.C.

[61] LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p. 65, gives an
account of the system under which special magistrates gave their name to
each year, and of the lists which have been preserved.

[62] This was lately found at Bagdad after long being supposed to be lost.
It is now i