[66] HERODOTUS, i. 186; DIODORUS, ii. viii. 2. Diodorus, following Ctesias, greatly exaggerates the length of the bridge when he puts it at fifty-five stades (3,032 feet). Even if we admit that the Euphrates, which in ancient times lost less of its waters in the adjoining marshes than it does now, was then considerably wider than at present, we can hardly account for such a difference. On the subject of this bridge see OPPERT, _Expédition_ &c., vol. i. pp. 191–193. [67] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 489. [68] See OPPERT, _Expédition_ &c., vol. i. pp. 184, 185. HERODOTUS mentions these quays (ii. 180, 186). DIODORUS (ii. viii. 3), gives them a length of 160 stades (nearly 18½ miles), which seems a great exaggeration. [69] HERODOTUS, i. 180. [70] And this makes us think that the streets were narrow, a conjecture confirmed by the words of Herodotus. In speaking of the doors above mentioned by which the river was reached, he does not use the word πύλαι, but πυλίδες, its diminutive. If these doors were so small, the streets must have been lanes. [71] This we gather from more than one phrase of the historian (ii. 183 and 196). [72] DIODORUS, ii. viii, 3 [73] All that he says is that it was on the Tigris (i. 193), that it had a king called Sardanapalus (ii. 150), and that it was taken by the Medes (i. 103, 106). [74] _Anabasis_, iii. 4. [75] DIODORUS, ii. iii. 2, 3. [76] Line 35 of the _Cylinder of Bellino_, after Pongnon (_l’Inscription de Bavian_, p. 25, in the _Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes-Études_).