The Boys' Book of Rulers. Farmer Lydia Hoyt

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      Crœsus was now thoroughly alarmed, and collecting all the forces he could command, he marched forth to a great plain just without the city, to meet Cyrus.

      The Lydian army was superior to that of Cyrus in cavalry, and upon this plain they would have a much greater advantage. To avoid this, Cyrus ordered all his large train of camels, which had been employed as beasts of burden, to be drawn up in line in front of his army, each one having a soldier upon his back, armed with a spear.

      It is said that horses cannot endure the sight or smell of a camel; and when the two armies met, the cavalry of Crœsus, riding furiously to the attack, were confronted by the line of huge, awkward camels, with their soldier riders. The horses were so frightened by the spectacle, that they turned and fled in dismay, trampling down their own forces, and causing complete confusion in the Lydian army. The army of Crœsus was totally defeated, and they fled into the city of Sardis and entrenched themselves there.

      Cyrus now besieged the city for fourteen days, endeavoring to find some place to scale the walls which surrounded it. One part of the wall passed over rocky precipices which were considered impassable. At length one of the soldiers of Cyrus, named Hyræades, observed one of the sentinels, who was stationed on the wall overlooking the precipice, leave his post, and come partway down the rocks to get his helmet, which had dropped down. Hyræades reported this incident to Cyrus, and so an attempt was made to scale the walls at that point. It was successful, and thus the city was taken. It is reported that in the confusion and noise of storming the city the life of Crœsus was saved by the miraculous speaking of his deaf-and-dumb son. Cyrus had commanded his soldiers not to kill Crœsus, but that they should take him alive, and he should then be brought to him. As Crœsus was escaping with his son a party of Persian soldiers took him prisoner, and were about to kill him, not knowing who he was, when the dumb boy cried out, —

      “It is Crœsus; do not kill him!”

      Cyrus had not ordered Crœsus to be spared from any motives of kindness; but that he himself might determine his fate.

      He commanded Crœsus to be put in chains, and a huge funeral pile to be built in a public square, and Crœsus and fourteen of the young Lydian nobles were placed upon the pile.

      Just as the torch was applied, Crœsus cried out in a tone of anguish and despair, —

      “Oh, Solon! Solon! Solon!”

      The officers who had charge of the execution asked him what he meant, and Cyrus, also hearing him, and being desirous of receiving an explanation of his mysterious words, commanded the fires to be put out, and ordered Crœsus to be unbound and to be brought to him. Cyrus now treated Crœsus with much kindness.

      Crœsus was very much incensed against the oracle at Delphi for having deceived him by false predictions; but the priests of the oracle replied that the destruction of the Lydian dynasty had long been decreed by fate on account of the guilt of Gyges, the founder of the line, who had murdered the rightful monarch, and usurped the crown. The oracles had foretold that a mighty empire would be overthrown, and Crœsus had wrongly imagined that it referred to the destruction of the kingdom of Cyrus. As to the other prediction made by the oracle, that when he should find a mule upon the throne of Media, he would lose his own, this had been fulfilled, as Cyrus, who was descended from the Persians on his father’s side, and from the Medians on his mother’s, had thus become a hybrid sovereign, represented by the mule.

      In his advance towards the dominions of Crœsus in Asia Minor, Cyrus had passed to the northward of the great and celebrated city of Babylon. He had now conquered all the nations from the Ægean Sea to the river Euphrates. He then subdued Syria and Arabia. After this he entered into Assyria and advanced towards Babylon, the only large city of the East yet unsubdued.

      The taking of Babylon is one of the greatest events in ancient history, and the principal circumstances with which it was attended were foretold in the Bible many years before it happened. Babylon, at this time, was the most magnificent city in the world. It was situated in a large plain, and was surrounded by walls which were eighty-seven feet thick, three hundred and fifty feet high, and sixty miles in circumference. These walls were in the form of a square, each side of which was fifteen miles long. They were built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, which bound bricks so firmly together that the mortar soon became harder than the bricks themselves. This wall was surrounded by a deep, wide trench filled with water. The great wall of Babylon contained 200,000,000 yards of solid masonry, or nearly twice the cubic contents of the famous wall of China. Each of the bricks was stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar. The wall was so wide that four chariots could move abreast upon its summit. Two hundred and fifty towers, each ten feet higher than the walls, rose above the parapet. One hundred gates of brass opened to as many streets. Each of the fifty streets was fifteen miles long, and one hundred and forty feet broad, crossing each other at right angles; these avenues divided the city into six hundred and seventy-six squares, each being two and a half miles in circuit. The buildings were erected around these squares with an open court in the centre, containing beautiful gardens and fountains. The river Euphrates flowed through the city, and was spanned by a bridge, five hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. Above the bridge rose an obelisk one hundred and twenty-five feet high. As the melting of the snows upon the mountains of Armenia caused the river Euphrates to overflow its banks in the months of June, July, and August, two artificial canals were cut, some distance above the city, which turned the course of these waters into the Tigris before they reached Babylon. To keep the river within its channel, they raised immense artificial banks on both sides, built with bricks cemented with bitumen. In making these works it was necessary to turn the course of the river another way. For this purpose a prodigious artificial lake was dug, forty miles square, one hundred and sixty in circumference, and thirty-five feet deep.

      Into this lake the whole river was turned by an artificial canal, cut from the west side of it, until the entire work was finished, when the river was allowed to flow into its former channel. This lake was kept, however, as a reservoir, as a means of irrigating the surrounding fields.

      Along the banks of the river were the famous Hanging Gardens, where the many terraces bloomed with brilliant flowers, and were shaded by groves of trees, and cooled by fountains of sparkling water. These beautiful gardens, which were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, were constructed by Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife Amytis, whose native land was Media, as she was the daughter of Astyages.

      Surrounded by a triple wall, and guarded by gates of brass, rose the magnificent royal palace, whose walls were adorned by pictures of the chase, and martial and festive processions, and whose apartments were furnished with the rich carpets of Persia, the costly fabrics of Damascus, and the jewels of Bokhara.

      Rising above all the other structures was the lofty Tower of Belus, or Babel. The tower was six hundred feet high, and was crowned with a statue of Belus, forty feet high, made of pure gold, which shone resplendent in the sunlight, or gleamed with matchless beauty in the soft moonlight. It is said that this tower far exceeded the greatest pyramid of Egypt in height. The ascent to the top was by stairs round the outside of it; and as the tower proper was composed of eight stories, each decreasing gradually in size, the entire tower formed a pyramid. In the different stories were many rooms, which were richly adorned with tables, censers, cups, and other sacred vessels of massive gold. Diodorus, one of the ancient historians, estimates the value of the riches contained in this temple to amount to $93,240,000. This temple stood in the time of Xerxes, but on his return from his Grecian expedition, he entirely destroyed it, having plundered it of all its immense treasures. Alexander the Great purposed to rebuild it, and employed ten thousand men to remove the rubbish which had accumulated around it, but after they had labored two months, Alexander died, and that put an end to the undertaking.

      Belshazzar gave a great feast in his palace to all his chief officers and nobles, even though Cyrus the Great was then besieging Babylon. It was during this impious feast, СКАЧАТЬ