Text
Orosius, Historia adversus Paganos 2.6:
Many, indeed, have told how Babylon was founded by Nebrot the Giant, and how she was restored later by Ninus or by Semiramis. This city, surrounded by level country and delightfully situated, was arranged like a camp, with her four surrounding walls formed into square. The report of the strength and size of these walls hardly seems credible; they were fifty cubits wide and four times as high. The wall, constructed of burnt brick with bitumen used as mortar, was surrounded on the outside by a very wide moat in place of a stream. In the circuit of the walls were a hundred bronze gates. Small stations for defenders, facing one another, were placed at regular intervals along the edges of the two sides of the wall and between them there was sufficient room for a four-horse chariot to pass. The houses within the city were of eight stories and were remarkable for their imposing height. Yet that great Babylon, the first city founded after the reestablishment of the human race, was now almost immediately conquered, captured, and overthrown.
... After Cyrus had attacked Babylon as an enemy, had ovethrown it as a conqueror, and had set it in order as a king, he transferred the war to Lydia. … for whatever has been built up by the hand of man falls and comes to an end through the passage of time. This truth is illustrated by the capture of Babylon. Her empire began to decline just as it had reached the height of its power, so that, in accordance with a certain law of succession which runs through the ages, posterity might receive the inheritance due to it - posterity which was fated to hand on the inheritance according to the same law. Thus great Babylon and vast Lydia fell at the first attacks that Cyrus made after his arrival. The mightiest arms of the East and also the head (= Babylon) succumbed in a campaign of a single battle; and now we ourselves, as we anxiously watch the structure of the once powerful Roman Republic, debate whether it is trembling more from the weakness common to old age or from the blows struck by foreign invaders.
Source (list of abbreviations)
Orosius, Historia adversus Paganos 2.6
Bibliography
| Raymond 1936, 81-82 | Raymond, Irving W. Seven Books of History against the Pagans. The Apology of Paulus Orosius. New York: Columbia University Press 1936. |
Amar Annus
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