[The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon by George Rawlinson]@TWC D-Link book
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon

CHAPTER II
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With respect to the width we have two very different statements, one by Herodotus and the other by Clitarchus and Strabo.
Herodotus makes the width 50 royal cubits, or about 85 English feet, Strabo and Q.Curtius reduced the estimate to 32 feet.

There is still greater discrepancy with respect to the height of the walls.

Herodotus says that the height was 200 royal cubits, or 300 royal feet (about 335 English feet); Ctesias made it 50 fathoms, or 300 ordinary Greek feet; Pliny and Solinus, substituting feet for the royal cubits of Herodotus, made the altitude 235 feet; Philostratus and Q.Curtius, following perhaps some one of Alexander's historians, gave for the height 150 feet; finally Clitarchus, as reported by Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo, who probably followed him, have left us the very moderate estimate of 75 feet.

It is impossible to reconcile these numbers.

The supposition that some of them belong properly to the outer, and others to the inner wall, will not explain the discrepancies--for the measurements cannot by any ingenuity be reduced to two sets of dimensions.


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