ed by the similarity of names, by
their ignorance in chronology, and the resemblance of one event with
another, may have ascribed such things to more ancient princes, as
belonged to those of a later date; or may have attributed a number of
exploits and enterprises to one, which ought to be divided amongst a
series of them, succeeding one another.

Semiramis, some time after her return, discovered that her son was
plotting against her, and one of her principal officers had offered him
his assistance. She then called to mind the oracle of Jupiter Ammon; and
believing that her end approached, without inflicting any punishment on
the officer, who was taken into custody, she voluntarily abdicated the
throne, put the government into the hands of her son, and withdrew from
the sight of men, hoping speedily to have divine honours paid to her
according to the promise of the oracle. And indeed we are told, she was
worshipped by the Assyrians, under the form of a dove. She lived sixty-two
years, of which she reigned forty-two.

There are in the _Memoirs of the Academy of Belles Lettres_(998) two
learned dissertations upon the Assyrian empire, and particularly on the
reign and actions of Semiramis.

What Justin(999) says of Semiramis, namely, that after her husband's
decease, not daring either to commit the government to her son, who was
then too young, or openly to take it upon herself, she governed under the
name and habit of Ninyas, and that, after having reigned in that manner
above forty years, falling passionately in love with her own son, she
endeavoured to induce him to comply with her criminal desires, and was
slain by him: all this, I say, is so void of all appearance of truth, that
to go about to confute it would be but losing time. It must however be
owned, that almost all the authors who have spoken of Semiramis, give us
but a disadvantageous idea of her chastity.

I do not know but that the glorious reign of this queen might partly
induce Plato to maintain, in his Commonwealth,(1000) that women as well as
men ought to be admitted into the management of public affairs, the
conducting of armies, and the government of states; and, by necessary
consequence, ought to be trained up in the same exercises as men, as well
for the forming of the body as the mind. Nor does he so much as except
those exercises, wherein it was customary to fight stark naked,
alleging(1001) that the virtue of the sex would be a sufficient coveri