516 Raoul-Rochette, “Sur l’Hercule Assyrien et Phénicien,” _Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848), pp. 277 _sq._; M. Duncker, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, iv.5 330-332; E. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, i. (Stuttgart, 1884) p. 604; G. Maspero, _Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient Classique_, iii. 618. 517 Herodotus, i. 7. 518 See above, pp. 115 _sq._, 173 _sq._ M131 Legend that Semiramis burnt herself on a pyre. 519 Hyginus, _Fab._ 243; Pliny, viii. 155. 520 See W. Robertson Smith, “Ctesias and the Semiramis Legend,” _English Historical Review_, ii. (1887) pp. 303-317. But the legend of Semiramis appears to have gathered round the person of a real Assyrian queen, by name Shammuramat, who lived towards the end of the ninth century B.C. and is known to us from historical inscriptions. See C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, _Die historische Semiramis und ihre Zeit_ (Tübingen, 1910), pp. 1 _sqq._; _id._, _s.v._ “Semiramis,” in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_, iv. 678 _sqq._; _The Scapegoat_, pp. 369 _sqq._ 521 See above, p. 114. 522 In ancient Greece we seem to have a reminiscence of widow-burning in the legend that when the corpse of Capaneus was being consumed on the pyre, his wife Evadne threw herself into the flames and perished. See Euripides, _Supplices_, 980 _sqq._; Apollodorus, _Bibliotheca_, iii. 7. 1; Zenobius, _Cent._ i. 30; Ovid, _Tristia_, v. 14. 38. M132 The “great burnings” for Jewish kings. 523 Isaiah xxx. 33. The Revised Version has “a Topheth” instead of “Tophet.” But Hebrew does not possess an indefinite article (the few passages of the Bible in which the Aramaic חת is so used are no exception to the rule), and there is no evidence that Tophet (Topheth) was ever employed in a general sense. The passage of Isaiah has been rightly interpreted by W. Robertson Smith in the sense indicated in the text, though he denies that it contains any reference to the sacrifice of the children. See his _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_,2 pp. 372 _sq._ He observes (p. 372, note 3): “Saul’s body was burned (1 Sam. xxxi. 12), possibly to save it from the risk of exhumation by the Philistines, but perhaps rather with a religious intention, and almost as an act of worship, since his bones were buried under the sacred tamarisk at Jabesh.” In 1 Chronicles x. 12 the tree under which the bones of Saul were buried is not a tamarisk but a terebinth or an oak.