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ταῦτα μέν. Translate ‘These were the defences with which she surrounded (her city) by digging (ἐκ βάθεος), but she took advantage of them to add such a supplementary work (παρενθήκην) as’ (the river wall and bridge).


Sayce (ad loc. and p. xxix) is very angry with H. for his mistake in speaking of ‘huge stones’ in Babylonia; but Nebuchadnezzar makes the same mistake (!) (E. I. H. ix. 24). Of course the stones were brought down the Euphrates from the north. Xenophon (Anab. i. 5. 5) speaks of a village on the Euphrates, where millstones were made for sale. Diodorus (ii. 8), who gives the bridge to Semiramis, makes it 5 stades long and 30 feet wide.


These ξύλα were no doubt a sort of drawbridge in the middle, pulled up on both sides; this feud (κλέπτοιεν) between the two river banks may be an unconscious echo of the rivalry between Babylon and her suburb, Borsippa.

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