Histories

then using hot bitumen for cement and interposing layers of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks, they built first the border of the moat and then the wall itself in the same fashion.

On the top, along the edges of the wall, they built houses of a single room, facing each other, with space enough between to drive a four-horse chariot. There are a hundred gates in the circuit of the wall, all of bronze, with posts and lintels of the same.

There is another city, called Is,[*](The modern Hit or Ait, where the Euphrates [47.5,31.83] (river), AsiaEuphrates enters the alluvial plain.) eight days' journey from Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, AsiaBabylon, where there is a little river, also named Is, a tributary of the Euphrates [47.5,31.83] (river), AsiaEuphrates river; from the source of this river Is, many lumps of bitumen rise with the water; and from there the bitumen was brought for the wall of Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, AsiaBabylon.

Thus, then, this wall was built; the city is divided into two parts; for it is cut in half by a river named Euphrates [47.5,31.83] (river), AsiaEuphrates, a wide, deep, and swift river, flowing from Armenia (region (general)), AsiaArmenia and issuing into the Red Sea [42,15] (sea) Red Sea.

The angles of the wall, then, on either side are built quite down to the river; here they turn, and from here a fence of baked bricks runs along each bank of the stream.

The city itself is full of houses three and four stories high; and the ways that traverse it, those that run crosswise towards the river and the rest, are all straight.