Nebuchadrezzar, they relate, routed, not far from the town of Dhat-irk, the Joctanides of Jorhom, who had barred his road to the Kaabah, and after seizing Mecca, reached the borders of the children of Himyra:  the exhausted condition of his soldiers having prevented him from pressing further forward in his career of conquest, he retraced his steps and returned to Babylon with a great number of prisoners, including two entire tribes, those of Hadhura and Uabar, whom he established as colonists in Chaldaea.* He never passed in this direction beyond the limits reached by Assur-bani-pal, and his exploits were restricted to some successful raids against the tribes of Kedar and Nabatsea.**

* Most of the Arabic legends relating to these conquests of Nebuchadrezzar are indirectly derived from the biblical story; but it is possible that the history of the expeditions against Central Arabia is founded on fact.

** This seems to follow from Jeremiah’s imprecations upon Kedar

The same reasons which at the commencement of his reign had restrained his ambition to extend his dominions towards the east and north, were operative up to the end of his life.  Astyages had not inherited the martial spirit of his father Cyaxares, and only one warlike expedition, that against the Cadusians, is ascribed to him.*

     * Moses of Chorene attributes to him long wars against an
     Armenian king named Tigranes; but this is a fiction of a
     later age.

Naturally indolent, lacking in decision, superstitious and cruel, he passed a life of idleness amid the luxury of a corrupt court, surrounded by pages, women, and eunuchs, with no more serious pastime than the chase, pursued within the limits of his own parks or on the confines of the desert.  But if the king was weak, his empire was vigorous, and Nebuchadrezzar, brought up from his youth to dread the armies of Media, retained his respect for them up to the end of his life, even when there was no longer any occasion to do so.  Nebuchadrezzar was, after all, not so much a warrior as a man of peace, whether so constituted by nature or rendered so by political necessity in its proper sense, and he took advantage of the long intervals of quiet between his campaigns to complete the extensive works which more than anything else have won for him his renown.  During the century which had preceded the fall of Nineveh, Babylonia had had several bitter experiences; it had suffered almost entire destruction at the hands of Sennacherib; it had been given up to pillage by Assur-bani-pal, not to mention the sieges and ravages it had sustained in the course of continual revolts.  The other cities of Babylonia, Sippara, Borsippa, Kutha, Nipur, Uruk, and Uru, had been subjected to capture and recapture, while the surrounding districts, abandoned in turn to Elamites, Assyrians, and the Kalda, had lain uncultivated for many years.  The canals at the same time had become choked with mud, the banks