the latter played no part in that overthrow, but have been introduced
into this chapter of history by an erroneous identification made by
Greeks. I cannot believe that both Greek and Hebrew authorities of very
little later date both fell into such an error.]


SECTION 4. THE CHALDAEANS

The other danger, the more imminent of the two, threatened Assyria from
the south. Once again a Semitic immigration, which we distinguish as
Chaldaean from earlier Semitic waves, Canaanite and Aramaean, had
breathed fresh vitality into the Babylonian people. It came, like
earlier waves, out of Arabia, which, for certain reasons, has been in
all ages a prime source of ethnic disturbance in West Asia. The great
southern peninsula is for the most part a highland steppe endowed with a
singularly pure air and an uncontaminated soil. It breeds, consequently,
a healthy population whose natality, compared to its death-rate, is
unusually high; but since the peculiar conditions of its surface and
climate preclude the development of its internal food-supply beyond a
point long ago reached, the surplus population which rapidly accumulates
within it is forced from time to time to seek its sustenance elsewhere.
The difficulties of the roads to the outer world being what they are
(not to speak of the certainty of opposition at the other end), the
intending emigrants rarely set out in small bodies, but move restlessly
within their own borders until they are grown to a horde, which famine
and hostility at home compel at last to leave Arabia. As hard to arrest
as their own blown sands, the moving Arabs fall on the nearest fertile
regions, there to plunder, fight, and eventually settle down. So in
comparatively modern times have the Shammar tribesmen moved into Syria
and Mesopotamia, and so in antiquity moved the Canaanites, the