that they were to be the children of those for whose sins they were offered to the gods. The fragment is as follows: 'The son who lifts his head among men, the son for his own life must (the father) give; the head of the child for the head of the man must he give; the neck of the child for the neck of the man must he give; the breast of the child for the breast of the man must he give.' The idea of vicarious punishment is here clearly indicated. The future life to which the Babylonian had looked forward was dreary enough. Hades, the land of the dead, was beneath the earth, a place of darkness and gloom, from which 'none might return,' where the spirits of the dead flitted like bats, with dust alone for their food. Here the shadowy phantoms of the heroes of old time sat crowned, each upon his throne, a belief to which allusion is made by the Hebrew prophet in his prophecy of the coming overthrow of Babylon (Is. xiv. 9). In the midst stood the palace of Allat, the queen of the underworld, where the waters of life bubbled forth beside the golden throne of the spirits of earth, restoring those who might drink of them to life and the upper air. The entrance to this dreary abode of the departed lay beyond Datilla, the river of death, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and it was here that the hero Gisdhubar saw Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah, after his translation to the fields of the blessed. In later times, when the horizon of geographical knowledge was widened, the entrance to the gloomy world of Hades, and the earthly paradise that was above it, were alike removed to other and more unknown regions. The conception of the after-life, moreover, was made brighter, at all events, for the favoured few. An Assyrian court-poet prays thus on behalf of his king: 'The land of the silver sky, oil unceasing, the benefits of blessedness may he obtain among the feasts of the gods, and a happy cycle among their light, even life everlasting, and bliss; such is my prayer to the gods who dwell in the land of Assur.' Even at a far earlier time we find the great Chaldean epic of Gisdhubar concluding with a description of the blissful lot of the spirit of Ea-bani: 'On a couch he reclines and pure water he drinks. Him who is slain in battle thou seest and I see. His father and his mother (support) his head, his wife addresses the corpse. His friends in the fields are standing; thou seest (them) and I see. His spoil on the ground is uncovered; of his spoil he hath no oversight, (as) thou seest and I see. His tender orphans beg for bread; the food that was stored in (his) tent is eaten.' Here the spirit of Ea-bani is supposed to behold from his couch in heaven the deeds that take place on the earth below.