young men, captains
and rulers, great lords and renowned; all of them riding upon horses,"
Jeremiah couples the horses with the chariots, as if he doubted whether
the chariot force or the cavalry were the more to be dreaded. "Behold,
he shall come up as clouds, and his chariot shall be as a whirlwind; his
horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled." In the
army of Xerxes the Babylonians seem to have served only on foot, which
would imply that they were not considered in that king's time to furnish
such good cavalry as the Persians, Medes, Cissians, Indians, and
others, who sent contingents of horse. Darius, however, in the Behistun
inscription, speaks of Babylonian horsemen; and the armies which overran
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, seem to have consisted mainly of horse.
The Babylonian armies, like the Persian, were vast hosts, poorly
disciplined, composed not only of native troops, but of contingents
from the subject nations, Cissians, Elamites, Shuhites, Assyrians, and
others. They marched with vast noise and tumult, spreading themselves
far and wide over the country which they were invading, plundering
and destroying on all sides. If their enemy would consent to a pitched
battle, they were glad to engage with him; but, more usually, their
contests resolved themselves into a succession of sieges, the bulk of
the population attacked retreating to their strongholds, and offering
behind walls a more or less protracted resistance. The weaker towns were
assaulted with battering-rams; against the stronger, mounds were raised,
reaching nearly to the top of the walls, which were then easily scaled
or broken down. A determined persistence in sieges seems to have
characterized this people, who did not take Jerusalem till the third,
nor Tyre till the fourteenth year.

In expeditions it sometimes happened that a question arose as to the
people or country next to be attacked. In such cases it appears that
recourse was had to divination, and the omens which were obtained
decided whither the next effort of the invader should be directed.
Priests doubtless accompanied the expeditions to superintend the
sacrifices and interpret them on such occasions. According to Diodorus,
the priests in Babylonia were a caste, devoted to the service of the
native deities and the pursuits of philosophy, and held in high honor by
the people. It was their business to guard the temples and serve at
the altars of the gods, to explain