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Look around these halls, stranger.
Take in these vases, these tapestries; these creaking statues and broken mosaics.
They all have stories, these things: stories that I shall relate to you.
I’ll be as truthful as I can, though sometimes my memory slips —
and some of the stories passed down to me have become confused in repetition,
or embellished by poets,
or were never true to begin with.
And besides, some of the things I shall tell you…
They’re so astonishing you may not believe them anyway.
Many cities will fall in this story.
Few will be as magnificent as Babylon, once the largest city in the world.
A city where gardens grew from rooftops, nourished by the sparkling Euphrates, which flowed right through Babylon’s heart;
a city ringed by lapis-blue walls and gates that bore the names of gods.
Darius, newly crowned king of the Persians, was not here to admire the sights.
The Babylonians rejected the rule of Darius, and so he responded as Persian kings do —
with thunderous wrath.
From their vast realm, the Persians brought forth every tool of destruction they could muster:
looming siege towers,
battering rams with heads of iron,
arrows wrapped in burning flax.
To Babylon, the Persians brought death.