conquest all over the east, to degrade at the pleasure of the victor, the captives taken in war. Among the predictions regarding the utter desolation of Babylon, we find it declared, that it should not again be inhabited, or dwelt in, from generation to generation; that even the wild Arab, in his wandering life, should not pitch his tent amid its ruins, nor yet the shepherd fold his flock upon its desecrated site: "But the wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there e-and the wild beasts of the island shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant places. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of Hosts."

...In accordance with this denunciation, Babylon soon ceased to be a royal city. The kings of Persia, its new masters, preferring Shushan, Ecbatana, and Persepolis for their royal residences, as spring, summer, or winter rendered the climate of either more agreeable. And Cyrus himself is said to have demolished the whole of the

i ;

outer wall of the city, soon after he possessed himself of the empire, not only as a precautionary measure, and to secure the allegiance of his new subjects during his absence in different parts of his kingdom, but to circumscribe the resources of the inhabitants in case of a revolt, by curtailing the pasture and arable grounds, within its enclo

sure.

As soon as Darius Hystaspes became master of the place, after its revolt and capture by Zopyrus, not satisfied with his predecessors precautions in reducing its second line of defence, he levelled the remaining walls, and removed its gates of brass, neither of which things Cyrus had done before. And Alexander the Great, in his conquest of Babylon, commanded six furlongs of the wall to be beat down at once, to raise a funeral pile for his favourite Hephæstion. But the Macedonians in their domination of the east, not only demolished great part of the bulwarks of the city, and left it without repairs or embellishments; but they built in its vicinity the city of Seleucia, probably out of the quarries of fallen Babylon, on purpose to withdraw from it the remaining inhabitants.

Thus, even its own masters accelerated its ruin; and those who ought to have protected it, were the very authors of its depopulation

*

The Arsacidian or Parthian dynasty, who recovered Persia from the successors of Alexander, about a century after its subjugation by that prince, completed the ruin of Babylon by building the city of Ctesiphon, which carried away its remaining population. So that, according to the anathema pronounced against Babylon, even her natural guardians became her enemies, and conspired to reduce her, though by indirect means, to that state of utter desolation to which the curse of the Almighty had fore-ordained her.

As, in the countries of the east, water is one of the primary elements of existence, both in human life, and in agriculture from which the means of sustenance are derived; so whenever the refreshing and fertilizing influence of the Euphrates, through its various channels and canals, were cut off, both men and animals, as well as vegetation, would naturally wither and languish,

and the richest soil degenerate into desert. While Babylon was the metropolis of the east, the control of the river enabled her to fertilize the adjacent country; but when Cyrus removed the seat of government to distant provinces, and resided in Media, or at Shushan, or Persepolis, not only was Babylon neglected, but the lands of Mesopotamia and Chaldea deprived of their wonted irrigations, became arid and barren. What neglect effected, in the case of the Persian, policy consummated under the Parthian dynasty; for they promoted and encouraged whatever had a tendency either to extend or to perpetuate the desert on their frontier towards the Romans; or to render them inaccessible to the incursions of their persevering and warlike enemies.* Thus negligence, policy, and despotism, united their separate agency to accomplish the purposes, and to fulfil the denunciations of Him who knoweth the end from the beginning.

In the reign of Antoninus, Babylon was so totally dilapidated, that no part of the city remain

• See Vincent's Voyage of Nearchus.

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couchant upon the where the gold, and the silver, and the cedar。 spot dolgour fob 190 work, and the purple, and the silk, and the scarlet, had ministered to the pride of the magnificent

Babylonian. The howl of the hyena, of the lion

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palace, where the Assyrian had reposed on his blugh 1915 6% PROHLA SA IS

couch of ivory, listening to the notes of the dul

India to the frontiers of Syria, was, in its turn, subverted

by Artaxerxes the founder of a new dynasty; which, un

der the name of the Sassanides, governed Persia till the