mentioned as remarkable for their great extent, but cannot be dismissed
without a more special and minute description. Like the "Hanging
Gardens," they were included among the "world's seven wonders,"
and, according to every account given of them, their magnitude and
construction were remarkable.

It has been already noticed that, according to the lowest of the ancient
estimates, the entire length of the walls was 360 stades, or more than
forty-one miles. 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. The only conclusion
which it seems possible to draw from the conflicting testimony is that
the numbers were either rough guesses made by very unskilful travellers,
or else were (in most cases) intentional exaggerations palmed upon them
by the native ciceroni. Still the broad facts remain--first, that the
walls enclosed an enormous space, which was very partially occupied by
buildings; secondly, that they were of great and unusual thickness;