But the great Babylonian empire did not last long. Cyrus the Persian
took Babylon, Belshazzar was slain, the great Assyrian power passed
away, and the second great world-empire, the Persian empire, was built
upon its ruins.

What city did the Persian kings make their capital? Not Babylon, with
its mighty walls and massive gates, but Shushan, the City of Lilies.
They chose it as their chief city for three reasons; it was nearer to
their old home, Persia, it was cooler than Babylon because of the
neighbouring mountains, and lastly, and above all, it had the best water
in the world. The water of the river Choaspes was so much esteemed for
its freshness, its clearness, and its salubrity, that the Persian kings
would drink no other; they had it carried with them wherever they went;
even when they undertook long warlike expeditions, the water of the
Choaspes was considered a necessary provision for the journey.

The City of Lilies, in the days of the Rab-shakeh, was a perfect
fairy-land of beauty, surrounded as it was by fruit-gardens and
corn-fields; the white houses standing out from amongst dark palm trees,
and the high walls encircled by groves of citron and lemon trees. As the
Rab-shakeh walks along the air is scented with their blossoms, and with
the sweet fragrance of the countless Shushan lilies, growing beside the
margin of the sparkling rivers.

Above him, in the midst of the city, stands his lordly home. It may well
be a magnificent place, for it is the palace of the greatest king in the
world, the mighty King of Persia. The palace in which the Rab-shakeh
lives is not the old palace in which Daniel stayed when he visited
Shushan; it is quite a new building, built only forty years before by
the great Ahasuerus, the husband of Queen Esther. It was to celebrate