e of Tyana, who lived in the days of Nero and the
apostles, has left an account of Babylon as he saw it, as late as the
first century of our era. Still the Euphrates swept beneath its walls,
dividing the city into halves, with great palaces on either side. He
says:

"The palaces are roofed with bronze, and a glitter goes off
from them; but the chambers of the women and of the men and the
porticoes are adorned partly with silver, and partly with
golden tapestries or curtains, and partly with solid gold in
the form of pictures."

And of the king's judgment hall he reported:

"The roof had been carried up in the form of a dome, to
resemble in a manner the heavens, and that it was roofed with
sapphire, a stone that is very blue and like heaven to the eye;
and there were images of the gods, which they worship, fixed
aloft, and looking like golden figures shining out of the
ether."--_Philostratus, "Life of Apollonius," book 1, chap.
25._

Evidently Babylon was still "the land of graven images," and the
desolation foretold by the prophet had not yet befallen its palaces. But
that prophetic word, written eight hundred years before, was still upon
the scroll of the Book, the sure Word of God, who sees the end from the
beginning.

[Illustration: EGYPT'S GLORY DEPARTED

"The idols of Egypt shall be moved." Isa. 19:1.]

The view given us by Apollonius is perhaps the last glimpse we have of
Babylon's passing glory. Even then for centuries the walls had been a
quarry from which stones were drawn for Babylon's rival, Seleucia, on
the Tigris. And Strabo, the Greek geographer, who also wrote in the
first century, had described Babylon as "in great part deserted,"
adding,

"No one would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic
writers said of Megalopolitae, in Arcadia, 'The great city is a
great desert.'"--_"Geography," book 16, chap. 1._

Already pagan writers had begun to describe its condition in the terms
of the prophecy uttered so long before. And now what is its state? The
doom foretold has fallen heavy upon the city, upon its palaces, and
"upon the graven images of Babylon." For a century and more, travelers'
accounts have frequently borne witness to the exact fulfilment of the
prophecy in the remarkable desolations of that city, once mistress of
the world.

"Babylon shall become heaps," said the prophecy, "and owls shall dwell
there." T