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Eusebius, Praeparatio 9.41:
‘When Nebuchadnezzar had succeeded to the kingdom, he fortified Babylon with a triple circuit of walls in fifteen days, and he changed the course of the river Armacales, which is a branch of the Euphrates, and also of the Acracanus. To protect the city of the Sippareni he dug out a reservoir having a circuit of forty parasangs and a depth of twenty fathoms, and put gates to it, by opening which they irrigated the plain; and they call them Echetognomones. He also walled off the inundation of the Red Sea, and built the city Teredon at the place of the incursions of the Arabs. His palace too he adorned with trees, and gave it the name of the Hanging Gardens.’ … That Nabûcodrosorus, having become more powerful than Heracles, invaded Libya and Iberia, Breaking their resistence, he subdued them. And part of them he led away and settled on the right-hand side of the Pontus sea.
It is moreover related by the Chaldeans, that as he went up into his palace he was possessed by some god; and he cried out and said: “Oh Babylonians, I, Nabûcodrosorus, foretell to you a calamity which must shortly come to pass, which neither Belus my ancestor, nor Queen Beltis, have power to persuade the Fates to avert. A Persian mule shall come, and by the assistance of your gods shall impose upon you the yoke of slavery; the author of which shall be a Mede, in whom the Assyrians glory. O would that before he gave up my citizens some Charybdis or sea might swallow him up utterly out of sight; or that, turning in other directions, he might be carried across the desert, where there are neither cities nor foot of man, but where wild beasts have pasture and birds their haunts, that he might wander alone among rocks and ravines; and that, before he took such thoughts into his mind, I myself had found a better end.” He after uttering this prediction had immediately disappeared, and his son Amil-marudokos became king. But he was slain by his kinsman Niglisar, who left a son Labassoaraskos. And when he died by a violent death, Nabannidochus, who was not at all related to him was appointed king. But after the capture of Babylon, Cyrus presents him with the principality of Carmania.
Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Abydenus 6
Eusebius, Praeparatio 9.41
Amar Annus
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