The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [115]
4. He also had, belonging to his own private stud, besides war horses, eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares, twenty to each stallion.
5. Besides which he kept so great a number of Indian hounds, that four large villages of the plain were exempted from all other charges on condition of keeping them in food.
6. Very little rain falls in Assyria, just enough to make the corn sprout, after which the plant is nourished and the ears formed by irrigation from the river.
7. For the river does not, as in Egypt, overflow the corn-lands of its own accord, but is spread over them by hand or the help of engines.
8. The whole of Babylonia is, like Egypt, intersected with canals.
9. The largest of them, which runs towards the winter sun, and is impassable except in boats, is carried from the Euphrates into the Tigris, the river on which the town of Nineveh formerly stood.
10. Of all countries none is so fruitful in grain. It cannot grow the fig, the olive, the vine, or any other tree of the kind; but in grain it is wonderfully fruitful.
11. The blades of the wheat and barley are often four fingers in breadth. As for millet and sesame, what heights they reach! The fruitfulness of Babylonia must seem incredible to those who have never visited the country.
12. The only oil they use is made from the sesame plant. Palm trees grow in great numbers over the whole of the flat country, and their fruit supplies them with bread, wine and honey.
13. Palms are cultivated like fig trees; for example, Babylonians tie the fruit of the male palms to the branches of the date-bearing palm,
14. To let the gallfly enter the dates and ripen them, and to prevent the fruit from falling off.
15. When Cyrus had conquered the Babylonians, he conceived the desire of bringing the Massagetae under his dominion.
16. Now the Massagetae are said to be a great and warlike nation, dwelling eastward beyond the River Araxes, and opposite the Issedonians. Many regarded them as a Scythian race.
17. The Araxes is said by some to be a greater river than the Ister (Danube). It has forty mouths, all but one of which disappear into marshes. The other mouth flows with a clear course into the Caspian Sea.
18. Now, the sea frequented by the Greeks, the Mediterranean; the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules, called the Atlantic; and the Erythraean Sea into which the Tigris and Euphrates flow, are all the same sea.
19. But the Caspian is a distinct sea, lying by itself, in length fifteen days’ voyage with a rowboat, in breadth, at the broadest part, eight days’ voyage.
20. Many and various are the tribes inhabiting its environs, most living on the wild fruits of the forest.
21. In these forests certain trees grow, from whose leaves, pounded and mixed with water, the inhabitants make a dye, with which they paint pictures of animals on their clothes;
22. And the pictures never wash out, but last as though they had been woven into the cloth.
23. On the west the Caspian Sea is bounded by the Caucasus, the most extensive and loftiest of all mountain ranges.
24. To its east is a vast plain, stretching out interminably before the eye, possessed by those Massagetae whom Cyrus now wished to subdue.
Chapter 21
1. At this time the Massagetae were ruled by a queen named Tomyris, who at the death of her husband, the late king, had mounted the throne.
2. To her Cyrus sent ambassadors, with instructions to court her on his part, pretending that he wished to marry her.
3. Tomyris, however, aware that it was her kingdom, and not herself, that he courted, forbade the men to approach.
4. Cyrus, therefore, finding that he did not advance his designs by this deceit, marched towards the River Araxes, openly displaying his hostile intentions.
5. He set to work to construct a bridge, and began building towers on the boats to be used in the passage.
6. While Cyrus was occupied in these labours, Tomyris sent a herald to him, who said, ‘King, cease to press this enterprise,