he Indies and the Mediterranean.
He built a capital for himself on the banks of the Tigris, in the form
of a parallelogram, measuring a hundred and fifty stadia in length,
ninety stadia in width; altogether, the walls were four hundred and
eighty stadia in circumference. In addition to the Assyrians who formed
the bulk of the population, he attracted many foreigners to Nineveh,
so that in a few years it became the most flourishing town in the whole
world. An inroad of the tribes of the Oxus interrupted his labours;
Ninos repulsed the invasion, and, driving the barbarians back into
Bactria, laid siege to it; here, in the tent of one of his captains, he
came upon Semiramis, a woman whose past was shrouded in mystery. She
was said to be the daughter of an ordinary mortal by a goddess, the
Ascalonian Derketo. Exposed immediately after her birth, she was found
and adopted by a shepherd named Simas, and later on her beauty aroused
the passion of Oannes, governor of Syria. Ninos, amazed at the courage
displayed by her on more than one occasion, carried her off, made her
his favourite wife, and finally met his death at her hands. No sooner
did she become queen, than she founded Babylon on a far more extensive
scale than that of Nineveh. Its walls were three hundred and sixty
stadia in length, with two hundred and fifty lofty towers, placed here
and there on its circuit, the roadway round the top of the ramparts
being wide enough for six chariots to drive abreast. She made a kind of
harbour in the Euphrates, threw a bridge across it, and built quays one
hundred and sixty stadia in length along its course; in the midst of the
town she raised a temple to Bel. This great work was scarcely finished
when disturbances broke out in Media; these she promptly repressed, and
set out on a tour of inspection through the whole of her provinces,
with a view to preventing the recurrence of similar outbreaks by her
presence. Wherever she went she left records of her passage behind her,
cutting her way through mountains, quarrying a pathway through the solid
rock, making broad highways for herself, bringing rebellious tribes
beneath her yoke, and raising tumuli to mark the tombs of such of her
satraps as fell beneath the blows of the enemy. She built Ecbatana in
Media, Semiramocarta on Lake Van in Armenia, and Tarsus in Cilicia;
then, having reached the confines of Syria, she crossed the isthmus, and
conquered Egypt and Ethiopia. The far-famed wea