'Lady of Kingdoms!'--Who shall mourn her fate?
Her guilt is full, her march of triumph o'er."

But still, under Medo-Persia, and later under the Greeks, the city
itself was populous and prosperous and beautiful. The skeptic of the
time may have pointed to it as evidence that here, at least, the Hebrew
prophet had missed the mark.

Apollonius, the sage of Tyana, who lived in the days of Nero and the
apostles, has left an account of Babylon as he saw it, as late as the
first century of our era. Still the Euphrates swept beneath its walls,
dividing the city into halves, with great palaces on either side. He
says:

"The palaces are roofed with bronze, and a glitter goes off
from them; but the chambers of the women and of the men and the
porticoes are adorned partly with silver, and partly with
golden tapestries or curtains, and partly with solid gold in
the form of pictures."

And of the king's judgment hall he reported:

"The roof had been carried up in the form of a dome, to
resemble in a manner the heavens, and that it was roofed with
sapphire, a stone that is very blue and like heaven to the eye;
and there were images of the gods, which they worship, fixed
aloft, and looking like golden figures shining out of the
ether."--_Philostratus, "Life of Apollonius," book 1, chap.
25._