wo
elements will be found conjoined more or less throughout most of the
history of Herodotus, though as we descend to later times, we shall find
the latter element in constantly increasing proportion. His conception
of history is extremely different from that of Thucydides, who lays down
to himself the true scheme and purpose of the historian, common to him
with the philosopher--to recount and interpret the past, as a rational
aid toward pre-vision of the future.

In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ctesias,
no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon. His narrative,
indeed, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges
materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data
altogether different.

"I shall mention (says Herodotus) these conquests which gave Cyrus most
trouble, and are most memorable: after he had subdued all the rest of
the continent, he attacked the Assyrians." Those who recollect the
description of Babylon and its surrounding territory, will not be
surprised to learn that the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor
much trouble. Their only surprise will be, how it could ever have been
taken at all--or indeed how a hostile army could have even reached it.
Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen Nitocris (mother of that
very Labynetus who was king when Cyrus attacked the place) apprehensive
of invasion from the Medes after their capture of Nineveh, had executed
many laborious works near the Euphrates for the purpose of obstructing
their approach. Moreover there existed what was called the wall of Media
(probably built by her, but certainly built prior to the Persian
conquest), one hundred feet high and twenty feet thick, across the
entire space of seventy-five miles which joined the Tigris with one of
the canals of the Euphrates: while the canals themselves, as we may see
by the march of the ten thousand Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa,
presented means of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army such as
that of the Persians. On the east, the territory of Babylonia was
defended by the Tigris, which cannot be forded lower than the ancient
Nineveh or the modern Mosul. In addition to these ramparts, natural as
well as artificial, to protect the territory--populous, cultivated,
productive, and offering every motive to its inhabitants to resist even
the entrance of an enemy--we are told that the Babylonians were so
thoroughly pre