There is no mention of it in the Persian cuneiform in- scriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty. Herodotus (i, 193) speaks of the Tigris as " the river upon which the town of Nineveh formerly stood." He must have passed, in his journey to Babylon, very near the site of the city — perhaps actually over it. So accurate a recorder of what he saw would scarcely have omitted to mention, if not to describe, any ruins of importance that might have existed there. Not two centuries had then elapsed since the fall of the city. Equally conclusive proof of its condition is afforded by Xenophon, who with the ten thousand Greeks encamped during his retreat on, or very near, its site (B.C. 401). The very name had then been forgotten, or at least he does not appear to have been acquainted with it, for he calls one group of ruins "La- rissa," and merely states that a second group was near the deserted town of Mespila (A nub. iii, iv, § 7). The ruins, as he describes them, correspond in many re- spects with those which exist r.t the present day, ex- cept that he assigns to the walls near Mespila a circuit of six parasangs, or nearly three times their actual di- mensions. Ctesias placed the city on the Euplirates {Frag, i, 2), a proof either of his ignorance or of the en- tire disappearance of the place. He appears to have led Diodorns Siculus into the same error (ii, 27, 28). The historians of Alexander, with the exception of Arrian {Ind. 42, 3), do not even allude to the city, over the ru- ins of which the conqueror must have actually marched. His great victory of Arbela was won almost in sight of them. It is evident that the later Greek and lioman writers, such as Strabo, Ptolemy, and Plinj', could onlj' have derived any independent knowledge tliey pos- sessed of Nineveh from traditions of no authority. They concur, however, in placing it on the eastern bank of the Tigris. During the Koman period, a small castle or fortified town appears to have stood on some part of the site of the ancient city. It was probably built bj' the Persians (Amm. Marcell. xxiii, 22) ; and subse- quently occupied by the Romans, and erected by the emperor Claudius into a colony. It appears to have borne the ancient traditional name of Nineve, as well as its corrupted form of Ninos and Ninus, and also at one time that of IlierapoUs. Tacitus (.-1 nn. xii, 13), mentioning its capture by Meherdates, calls it " Ninos;" on coins of Trajan it is "Ninus," on those of Maximinus "Niniva," in both instances the epithet Claudiopolis being added. Many Koman remains, such as sepulchral vases, bronze and other ornaments, sculptured figures in marble, terra-cottas, and coins, have been discovered in the rubbish covering the Assyrian ruins ; besides wells and tombs, constructed long after the destruction of the Assyrian edifices. The Roman settlement appears to have been in its turn abandoned, for there is no men- tion of it when Heraclius gained the great victory over the Persians in the battle of Nineveh, fought on the very site of the ancient city, A.D. 627. After the Arab conquest, a fort on the east bank of the Tigris bore the name of "Ninawi" (Rawlinson, As. Soc. Journal, xii, 418). Benjamin of Tudela, in the 12th century, men- tions the site of Nineveh as occupied by numerous in- habited villages and small townships (ed. Asher, i, 91). The name remained attached to the ruins during the Middle Ages; and from them a bishop of the Chalda;an Church derived his title (Assemani, iv, 459) ; but it is doubtful whether any town or fort was so called. Early English travellers merely allude to the site (Purchas, ii, 1387). Niebuhr is the first modern traveller who speaks of " Nuniyah" as a village standing on one of the ruins which he describes as "a considerable hill" (ii, 353). This may be a corruption of" Nebbi Yunus," the Proph- et Jonah, a name still given to a village containing his apocryphal tomb. Mr. Rich, who surveyed the site in 1820, does not mention Nuniyah, and no such place now exists. Tribes of Turcomans and sedentary Arabs, and Chalda?an and Syrian Christians, dwell in small mud- built villages, and cultivate the soil in the country around the ruins ; and occasionally a tribe of wandering
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Kurds, or of Bedouins driven by hunger from the des- ert, will pitch their tents among them. After the Arab conipiest of the -west of Asia, Mosul, at one time the flourishing capital of an independent kingdom, rose on the opposite or western bank of the Tigris. Some sim- ilarity in the names has suggested its identification with the Mespila of Xenophon ; but its first actual mention only occurs after the Arab conquest (A.II. 16, or A.D. G37). It was sometimes known as Athur, and was united with Nineveh as an episcopal see of the Chaldasan Church (Assemani, iii, 2(;0). It has lost all its ancient prosperity, and the greater part of the town is now in ruins.
Traditions of the unrivalled size and magnificence of Nineveh were equally familiar to the Greek and Roman writers, and to the Arab geographers. But the city had fallen so completely into decay before the period of aiitliontic history that no description of it, or even of any of its monuments, is to be found in any ancient au- thor of trust. Diodorus Siculus asserts (ii, 3) that the city formed a quadrangle of 150 stadia by 90, or alto- gether of 480 stadia (no less than GO miles), and was surrounded by walls 100 feet high, broad enough for three chariots to drive abreast upon them, and defended by loOO towers, each 200 feet in height. According to Straljo (xvi, 737) it was larger than Babjdon, which was 385 stadia in circuit. In the O. T. we find only vague allusions to the splendor and wealth of the city, ami the very indefinite statement in the book of Jonah that it was " an exceeding great city," or " a great city to God," or " for God" (i. e. in the sight of God), " of three days' journey ;" and that it contained " sixscore thousand persons who could not discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle" (iv, 11). It is obvious that the accounts of Diodorus are for the most part absurd exaggerations, founded upon fabulous traditions, for which existing remains af- ford no warrant. It may, however, be remarked that the dimensions he assigns to the area of the city would correspond to the three days' journey of Jonah — the Jewish day's journey being 20 miles — if that expression be applied to the circuit of the walls. "Persons not discerning between their right hand and their left" may either allude to children or to the ignorance of the whole population. If the first be intended, the number of inhabitants, according to the usual calculation, would have amounted to about 600,000. But such expressions are probably mere Eastern figures of speech to denote vastness, and far too vague to admit of exact interpre- tation.