The gigantic city lay on both shores of the Euphrates.

It was more than forty miles in circumference, and its walls enclosed buildings surpassing in size and grandeur even the Pyramids and the temples of Thebes.
[These numbers and measurements are taken partly from Herodotus, partly from Diodorus, Strabo and Arrian.

And even the ruins of this giant city, writes Lavard, are such as to allow a very fair conclusion of its enormous size.

Aristotle (Polit.III.

I.) says Babylon's dimensions were not those of a city, but of a nation.] The mighty gates of brass, through which the royal train entered the city, had opened wide to receive this noble company.