with the hands tied, some led by ropes, which are drawn through holes in their lips and noses, sometimes tied in pairs, sometimes in troops, driven forward with blows by the soldiers in charge. The king plants his foot on the neck of a captive prince; he puts out the eyes of another with his lance; others are impaled. Then follows the victorious return; soldiers and music go before the king's chariot, before which, as we already know, the heads of the slain or executed princes of the enemy were occasionally carried. The strength of the chief cities formed in the last resort the support of the kingdom. The walls of these the kings of Asshur cannot have neglected to renew and strengthen. In the inscriptions only the buildings of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal at the walls of Nineveh are mentioned. According to the statements of Ctesias, preserved in Diodorus, the city of Nineveh formed a long rectangle of 480 stades (60 miles) in the circuit. The walls which inclosed this space were 100 feet high, and were overtopped by 1500 towers of double the height.[404] A writing of the Hebrews, which, however, is not earlier than the fourth century B.C., maintains that the circuit of Nineveh was three days' journey; 120,000 inhabitants lived in the city, who could not distinguish the right hand and the left, _i.e._ children in the earliest years of life. More important is the evidence of Nahum, from the middle of the seventh century B.C., that "Nineveh is full of men as a pool is full of water; her merchants are more numerous than the stars in heaven."[405] The position of Nineveh is marked by the ruins of Kuyundshik and Nebbi Yunus, opposite Mosul; and the remains of the outer wall allow us to fix, with tolerable accuracy, the circuit which it really had. As a fact it formed a long rectangle, somewhat out of the square. On the west the course of the Tigris covered the city; the wall on this side of the city extended along the ancient bed of the river for 13,600 feet; the wall of the longer eastern side measures 16,000 feet; the wall of the north side is exactly 7000 feet; that on the short south side is only half this length;[406] so that the whole circuit of the city does not reach ten miles, _i.e._ does not reach a sixth part of the extent given to it by Ctesias. Even if we add to this the circuit of the strong outer ramparts which run in a double and sometimes in a quadruple line, on the east side, from the point where the Khosr flows into the city, as far as the stream which, emptying into the Tigris, covered the southern front of Nineveh--even if we reckon in the city of Sargon (Khorsabad), which lay ten good miles to the north-east of Nineveh, on the left bank of the Khosr (p. 95), the circuit of both cities taken together does not amount to more than 15 miles. Xenophon, who was on the spot, and saw the walls of Nineveh still standing, gives them a circuit of six parasangs, _i.e._ of 20 miles. According to this,