and was chiefly remarkable for a prodigious tower which stood in the middle of it. Its base was a square, each side being a furlong in length; its height was also a furlong. It consisted of eight towers, built one upon the other, decreasing regularly to the top, whence it has been called a pyramid by several ancient authors. In height it far exceeded the most remarkable of the pyramids of Egypt. It is believed by respectable authorities to have been the tower mentioned in the Scriptures as the Tower of Babel, the presumptuous edifice which called down upon the human race the curse of the confusion of tongues. Upon the very summit was an observatory, by means of which the Babylonians attained the proficiency in astronomy which history ascribes to them. The chief use to which the building was put was the worship of Belus, the Assyrian Jupiter, and its wealth in statues, censers, cups and other sacred vesselsall of them of massive gold, and the spoil of conquered nations, was almost beyond calculation. An estimate made by Diodorus, however, places their value at six thousand three hundred Babylonish talents, or six hundred millions of dollars.

Such were the principal works of art and ingenuity which rendered Babylon so famous in antiquity; a portion of them are believed to have been due to Semiramis, though her share has not been satisfactorily separated from that of Ninus and of Nebuchadnezzar. All historians unite, however, in ascribing to her the building of the walls-an effort which must always be regarded with amazement, if not with incredulity.

When the works she had undertaken were completed, or sufficiently advanced, Semiramis resolved upon making a royal progress through her vast and constantly extending empire. She advanced into Media at the head of an imposing army. Here, in a romantic site, she laid out a garden whose extent was measured by square miles, and left, hewn upon the rocks which diversified the scene, the bas-reliefs of herself and one hundred of her guards. At Chaones she remained long enough to build

a palace and spend in it a season of riot and gross self-indulgence. She continued her route into the territory of the Persians, leaving traces of her passage in the aqueducts which conveyed water to thirsty cities, in the highways which she laid across tracts before impassable, in the mountains which she tunnelled and the valleys which she filled. Not content with her dominions in Asia, she extended them by conquests in Ethiopia and Libya. While in the latter country, curiosity led her to visit the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, which she consulted upon the number of years she had yet to live. The oracle replied that she would die when her son Ninyas should secretly attempt her life, but that after death several nations of the east would pay divine honors to her memory.

Whatever proportion of fable may be mingled with the history of Semiramis, it is the unanimous verdict of antiquity that the sway of the Assyrian queen extended over the whole of upper Asia. Statues, monuments, and inscriptions referring to her, cities either founded, built or improved by her, scattered over this wide expanse of territory, have proved to the inquirers of a later period, either that she had caused her supremacy to be acknowledged there, or that she had taken the very unusual step of embellishing kingdoms not her own. An inscription in which the princess chronicles her own exploits has been preserved by Polyænus :

"Nature gave me the form of a woman; my actions have raised me to the level of the most valiant of men. I have swayed the empire of Ninus, which, towards the east, touches the river Inamanes; upon the south, the land of incense and myrrh; and upon the north, the territory of the Sogdians. Before me, no Assyrian ever saw the sea; I have seen four whose waters were not navigated, and I have subdued them to my laws. I have constrained rivers to flow in the directions which I wished; and I never wished them to flow where they would not be useful. I have rendered sterile lands fruitful by irrigation. I have built

impregnable fortresses, and I have thrown roads across impracticable mountains. I have paved with my silver highways where before were the footprints of wild beasts; and in the midst of my labors, I have found time for my own diversion and for that of my friends."

While reigning in uninterrupted tranquillity, Semiramis heard that a nation which lived beyond the river Indus, and which derived its name from that stream, claimed to be the greatest people in the world, and that they dwelt in a fertile country, beneath a benignant sky. She resolved to make war upon a race thus presumptuous in their boasts and thus fortunate in their lot. She spent three years in preparation for the conflict, and finally took the field at the head of the largest army ever yet assembled. It consisted of three millions of infantry, five hundred thousand cavalry, one hundred thousand chariots, and an immense number of portable boats in which to cross the Indus. Aware that the great strength of Stabrobates, the Indian monarch, lay in his elephants, she caused three hundred thousand cows and oxen to be killed, and their skins to be dressed and colored to resemble elephants' hides. With these she made a large number of false elephants, the motive power of each being furnished by a camel. One hundred thousand men, armed with spears six feet long, were attached to this wing of the service. The Indian king having received notice of her approach, gathered an army even more numerous than that of the invaders, and sent word to the queen that she would soon have cause to repent an aggression as unwise as it was unjust. She launched her fleet of canoes upon the waters of the Indus, and attempted to reach the opposite bank. Battle was joined in the middle of the stream; the issue was for a long time doubtful, but the Indians were finally repulsed, and fled, leaving one hundred thousand prisoners in the hands of Semiramis. Encouraged by this success, and having transported her entire army across the river by means of her boats, which she had formed into a bridge, she

advanced into the heart of the enemy's territory. She discovered, too late, that the flight of Stabrobates had been designed expressly to decoy her within his power, for he now faced about, and a sanguinary engagement of the entire forces of both armies ensued. The real elephants were at first appalled at the uncouth and clumsy imitations which met them in the charge: and the Indian soldiers, accustomed to the balmy odors with which their spicy harvests filled the air, were almost incapacitated from fighting by the horrible smell of the hides in which the enemy's camels were incased. But both they and the elephants soon recovered, and the forces of Semiramis gave way before the combined attack. The Assyrian queen sought to rally her troops, but a panic had seized them, and they commenced a disorderly retreat towards the river. She was twice wounded by the hand of Stabrobates, and was only saved from capture by the swiftness of her horse. In the confusion attendant upon the re-passage of the Indus, large numbers of her men perished, and she regained her own dominions with hardly one-third of the army she had taken to the field.

As she approached her capital, she learned that her son Ninyas was plotting her destruction, and that one of her principal officers was lying in wait for her. She called to mind the response of the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, and, with a resignation unusual upon the throne, resolved to obey the implied injunction. Though she caused the treacherous officer to be taken into custody, she forbore inflicting punishment upon him, and after voluntarily abdicating the crown, and putting the supreme authority into the hands of her son, she withdrew from the sight of men. She is even said to have been changed into a dove, and to have been last seen when on the wing. Notwithstanding this metamorphosis, which would seem to preclude the possibility of sepulture, respectable authorities attribute to her a tomb, and even record a very peculiar inscription which they allege was placed upon it. This consisted of two distinct epigraphs, the

one contradicting and annulling the other: the first informed her royal successors that, in case of need, they would find large stores of precious metals within her tomb; the second embodied a fierce imprecation upon the perverse and avaricious king who should violate the sanctuary of the dead.

Semiramis died or disappeared in her sixty-second year, after a glorious and useful reign of forty years. She has been pronounced the best political economist of antiquity, and the first utilitarian queen. The reader may safely reject the greater portion of her history, such as it has been handed down to us; and he may even divide among several sovereigns bearing the name of Semiramis, the merit of the achievements which the chronicles usually attribute to her alone; there will still remain sufficient ground for admiration and respect for one or all of her line and lineage. The example of Semiramis is believed to have induced Plato to maintain, in his Commonwealth, that women, as well as men, should be admitted to the management of public affairs; that they should be trained to perform the same bodily exercises, and to undergo the same mental fatigue. But Aristotle and Xenophon, and, many centuries later, the French historian Rollin, surprised to find a philosopher so judicious in other respects, openly combating the most natural maxims of modesty, and insisting so strongly upon a principle at variance with the usual practice of mankind, "have, with great judgment, marked out the different ends to which man and woman are ordained, from the different qualities of body and mind wherewith they are endowed by the Author of Nature, who has given the one strength of body and intrepidity of mind, to enable him to undergo the greatest hardships and face the most imminent dangers; whilst the other, on the contrary, is of a weak and delicate constitution, accompanied with a natural softness and modest timidity, which render her more fit for a sedentary life, and dispose her to keep within the precincts of the house, and to employ herself in the concerns of prudent and industrious