what its real dimensions were." It would seem, therefore, that the upper
stories had fallen long before the age of Augustus. Even Ctesias, perhaps,
who is Diodorus's constant guide in all that he writes on the subject of
Chaldaea and Assyria, never saw the monument in its integrity. In any case,
the building was a complete ruin in the time of Strabo. "The tomb of
Belus," says that accurate and well-informed geographer, "is now
destroyed."[156] Strabo, like Diodorus, attributes the destruction of these
buildings partly to time, partly to the avenging violence of the Persians,
who, irritated by the never-ending revolts of Babylon, ruined the proudest
and most famous of her temples as a punishment. That the sanctuary was
pillaged by the Persians under Xerxes, as Strabo affirms, is probable
enough, but we have some difficulty in believing that they troubled
themselves to destroy the building itself.[157] The effort would have been
too great, and, in view of the slow but sure action of the elements upon
its substance, it would have been labour thrown away. The destruction of an
Egyptian monument required a desperate and long continued attack, it had to
be deliberately murdered, if we may use such a phrase, but the buildings of
Mesopotamia, with their thin cuirasses of burnt brick and their soft
bodies, required the care of an architect to keep them standing, we might
say of a doctor to keep them alive, to watch over them day by day, and to
stop every wound through which the weather could reach their vulnerable
parts. Abandoned to themselves they would soon have died, and died natural
deaths.

Materials and a system of construction such as those we have described
could only result, in a close style of architecture, in a style in which
the voids bore but a very small proportion to the solids. And such a style
was well suited to the climate. In the long and burning summers of
Mesopotamia the inhabitants freely exchanged light for coolness. With few
and narrow openings and thick walls the temperature of their dwellings
could be kept far lower than that of the torrid atmosphere without.[158]
Thus we find in the Ninevite palaces outer walls of from fifteen to
five-and-twenty feet in thickness. It would have been very difficult to
contrive windows through such masses as that, and they would when made have
given but a feeble light. The difficulty was frankly met by discarding the
use of any openings but the doors and skylights cut i