hort of 200 square miles.
Ctesias, also an eyewitness, and the next writer on the subject, reduced
the circuit of the walls to 360 stades, or 41 miles, and made the area
consequently little more than 100 square miles. These two estimates are
respectively the greatest and the least that have come down to us. The
historians of Alexander, while conforming nearly to the statements of
Ctesias, a little enlarge his dimensions, making the circuit 365, 368,
or 385 stades. The differences here are inconsiderable; and it seems to
be established, on a weight of testimony which we rarely possess in such
a matter, that the walls of this great town were about forty miles in
circumference, and enclosed an area as large as that of the Landgraviat
of Hesse-Homburg.

It is difficult to suppose that the real city--the streets and
squares--can at any time have occupied one half of this enormous area,
A clear space, we are told, was left for a considerable distance inside
the wall--like the _pomaerium_ of the Romans--upon which no houses
were allowed to be built. When houses began, they were far from being
continuous; gardens, orchards, even fields, were interspersed among
the buildings; and it was supposed that the inhabitants, when besieged,
could grow sufficient corn for their own consumption within the walls.
Still the whole area was laid out with straight streets, or perhaps one
should say with roads (for the houses cannot have been continuous
along them), which cut one another everywhere at right angles, like the
streets of some German towns. The wall of the town was pierced with a
hundred gates, twenty-five (we may suppose) in each face, and the roads
led straight to these portals, the whole area being thus cut up into
square blocks. The houses were in general lofty, being three or even
four stories high. They are said to have had vaulted roofs, which were
not protected externally with any tiling, since the climate was so dry
as to render such a protection unnecessary. The beams used in the houses
were of palm-wood, all other timber being scarce in the country; and
such pillars as the houses could boast were of the same material. The
construction of these last was very rude. Around posts of palm-wood
were twisted wisps of rushes, which were covered with plaster, and then
colored according the taste of the owner.

The Euphrates ran through the town, dividing it nearly in half. Its
banks were lined throughout with quays of brick laid