Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
chapter:
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84chapter 85chapter 86chapter 87chapter 88chapter 89chapter 90chapter 91chapter 92chapter 93chapter 94chapter 95chapter 96chapter 97chapter 98chapter 99chapter 100chapter 101chapter 102chapter 103chapter 104chapter 105chapter 106chapter 107chapter 108chapter 109chapter 110chapter 111chapter 112chapter 113chapter 114chapter 115chapter 116chapter 117chapter 118chapter 119chapter 120chapter 121chapter 122chapter 123chapter 124chapter 125chapter 126chapter 127chapter 128chapter 129chapter 130chapter 131chapter 132chapter 133chapter 134chapter 135chapter 136chapter 137chapter 138chapter 139chapter 140chapter 141chapter 142chapter 143chapter 144chapter 145chapter 146chapter 147chapter 148chapter 149chapter 150chapter 151chapter 152chapter 153chapter 154chapter 155chapter 156chapter 157chapter 158chapter 159chapter 160chapter 161chapter 162chapter 163chapter 164chapter 165chapter 166chapter 167chapter 168chapter 169chapter 170chapter 171chapter 172chapter 173chapter 174chapter 175chapter 176chapter 177chapter 178chapter 179chapter 180chapter 181chapter 182chapter 183chapter 184chapter 185chapter 186chapter 187chapter 188chapter 189chapter 190chapter 191chapter 192chapter 193chapter 194chapter 195chapter 196chapter 197chapter 198chapter 199chapter 200chapter 201chapter 202chapter 203chapter 204chapter 205chapter 206chapter 207chapter 208chapter 209chapter 210chapter 211chapter 212chapter 213chapter 214chapter 215chapter 216
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
186.
So she made the deep river her protection; and this work led to another which she added to it. Her city was divided into two parts by the river that flowed through the middle. In the days of the former rulers, when one wanted to go from one part to the other, one had to cross in a boat; and this, I suppose, was a nuisance. But the queen also provided for this; she made another monument of her reign out of this same work when the digging of the basin of the lake was done.
[2]
She had very long blocks of stone cut; and when these were ready and the place was dug, she turned the course of the river into it, and while it was filling, the former channel now being dry, she bricked the borders of the river in the city and the descent from the gate leading down to the river with baked bricks, like those of the wall; and near the middle of the city she built a bridge with the stones that had been dug up, binding them together with iron and lead.
[3]
Each morning, she laid square-hewn logs across it, on which the Babylonians crossed; but these logs were removed at night, lest folk always be crossing over and stealing from one another.
[4]
Then, when the basin she had made for a lake was filled by the river and the bridge was finished, Nitocris brought the Euphrates back to its former channel out of the lake; thus she had served her purpose, as she thought, by making a swamp of the basin, and her citizens had a bridge made for them.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Sort places
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Euphrates (1)Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
References (23 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(1):
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER CXII
- Cross-references to this page (3):
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(19):
- LSJ, ἀνοικο-δομέω
- LSJ, ἀπαίρω
- LSJ, βάθος
- LSJ, ξύλον
- LSJ, διάβα^σις
- LSJ, διαβαίνω
- LSJ, ἐκτρέπω
- LSJ, ἐπιτείνω
- LSJ, κατά-βα^σις
- LSJ, κατασκευ-άζω
- LSJ, κλέπτω
- LSJ, λείπω
- LSJ, λόγος
- LSJ, μνημόσυ^νον
- LSJ, ὀρύσσω
- LSJ, ὀχλ-ηρός
- LSJ, παρεν-θήκη
- LSJ, ῥεῖθρ-ον
- LSJ, τέμνω
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences