wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch. The
depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible and gave the
impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could
hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But I must say what I have
heard. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth
was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain,
and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which
came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain, and touching
the city at various points, was there let off into the sea. From above,
likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut in the
plain, and again let off into the ditch, toward the sea; these canals
were at intervals of a Hundred stadia, and by them they brought, down
the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the
earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another,
and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the
earth--in winter having the benefit of the rains, and in summer
introducing the water of the canals. As to the population, each of the
lots in the plain had an appointed chief of men who were fit for
military service, and the size of the lot was to be a square of ten
stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand.

"And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country
there was also a vast multitude having leaders, to whom they were
assigned according to their dwellings and villages. The leader was
required to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so
as to make up a total of ten thousand chariots; also two horses and
riders upon them, and a light chariot without a seat, accompanied by a
fighting man on foot carrying a small shield, and having a charioteer
mounted to guide the horses; also, he was bound to furnish two
heavy-armed men, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters, and