The people called Assyrians or Syrians—for among the Greek authors no constant distinction is maintained between the two[552]— were distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by Mount Zagros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount Ararat, by which they were separated from the Medes,—and extending from thence westward and southward to the Euxine sea, the river Halys, the Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf,—thus covering the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates south of Armenia, as well as Syria and Syria-Palæstine, and the territory eastward of the Halys called Kappadokia. But the Chaldæan order of priests appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian gulf. The vast, rich, and lofty temple of Bêlus in that city, served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount ascendency of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans,—though some writers have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the Euxine.[553] [552] Herodot. i, 72; iii, 90-91; vii, 63; Strabo, xvi, p. 736, also ii, p. 84, in which he takes exception to the distribution of the οἰκουμένη (inhabited portion of the globe) made by Eratosthenês, because it did not include in the same compartment (σφραγὶς) Syria proper and Mesopotamia: he calls Ninus and Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73). The Homeric names Ἀρίμοι, Ἐρεμβοὶ (the first in the Iliad, ii, 783, the second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the Oriental name of this race _Aram_; it seems more ancient, in the Greek habits of speech, than _Syrians_ (see Strabo, xvi, p. 785). The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stêsichorus, recognized _Arabus_ as the son of Hermês, by Throniê, daughter of Bêlus (Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. Marktscheffel; Strabo, i, p. 42). [553] Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of this conquest of Babylon by Chaldæan barbarians from the northern mountains as a certain fact, explaining the great development of the Babylonian empire under Nabopolasar and Nebuchadnezzar from 630-580 B. C.; it was, he thinks, the new Chaldæan conquerors who thus extended their dominion over Judæa and Phenicia.