Herodotus gives us to understand that he visited Babylon in the course of his many wanderings and we have no cause to distrust him; we may even date his visit to somewhere about 450 B.C.He was not indeed the only Greek of his day, nor the first, to get so far afield.

But his account nevertheless neither is nor professes to be purely that of an eyewitness.

Like other writers in various ages,[8] he drew no sharp division between details which he saw and details which he learnt from others.

For the sake (it may be) of vividness, he sets them all on one plane, and they must be judged, not as first-hand evidence but on their own merits.
[7] Hdt.i.178 foil.

The accounts of Ctesias and other ancient writers seem to throw no light on the town-planning and streets of Babylon, however useful they may otherwise be.
[8] The Elizabethan description of Britain by William Harrison is an example from a modern time.
Babylon, says Herodotus, was planted in an open plain and formed an exact square of great size, 120 stades (that is, nearly 14 miles) each way; the whole circuit was 480 stades, about 55 miles.