" Isa. 19:1.]
The view given us by Apollonius is perhaps the last glimpse we have of
Babylon's passing glory. Even then for centuries the walls had been a
quarry from which stones were drawn for Babylon's rival, Seleucia, on
the Tigris. And Strabo, the Greek geographer, who also wrote in the
first century, had described Babylon as "in great part deserted,"
adding,
"No one would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic
writers said of Megalopolitae, in Arcadia, 'The great city is a
great desert.'"--_"Geography," book 16, chap. 1._
Already pagan writers had begun to describe its condition in the terms
of the prophecy uttered so long before. And now what is its state? The
doom foretold has fallen heavy upon the city, upon its palaces, and
"upon the graven images of Babylon." For a century and more, travelers'
accounts have frequently borne witness to the exact fulfilment of the
prophecy in the remarkable desolations of that city, once mistress of
the world.
"Babylon shall become heaps," said the prophecy, "and owls shall dwell
there." This is what Mr. Layard, the English archeologist, found on his
visit in 1845:
"Shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of
the land.
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