In every possible way the Babylonians practised luxuriousness of living, and in respect of softness and self-indulgence they certainly did not fall short of any nation of antiquity.
There was, however, a harder and sterner side to the Babylonian character.

Despite their love of luxury, they were at all times brave and skilful in war; and, during the period of their greatest strength, they were one of the most formidable of all the nations of the East.
Habakkuk describes them, drawing evidently from the life, as "bitter and hasty," and again as "terrible and dreadful--their horses' hoofs swifter than the leopard's, and more fierce than the evening wolves." Hence they "smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke"-- they "made the earth to tremble, and did shake kingdoms"-- they carried all before them in their great enterprises, seldom allowing themselves to be foiled by resistance, or turned from their course by pity.

Exercised for centuries in long and fierce wars with the well-armed and well-disciplined Assyrians, they were no sooner quit of this enemy, and able to take an aggressive attitude, than they showed themselves no unworthy successors of that long-dominant nation, so far as energy, valor, and military skill constitute desert.

They carried their victorious arms from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the banks of the Nile; wherever they went, they rapidly established their power, crushing all resistance, and fully meriting the remarkable title, which they seem to have received from those who had felt their attacks, of "the hammer of the whole earth." The military successes of the Babylonians were accompanied with needless violence, and with outrages not unusual in the East, which the historian must nevertheless regard as at once crimes and follies.

The transplantation of conquered races--a part of the policy of Assyria which the Chaldaeans adopted--may perhaps have been morally defensible, notwithstanding the sufferings which it involved.