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H. includes (cf. iv. 39. 1) under ‘Assyria’ the whole region between the Iranian plateau, Armenia, and the desert; this province (for its history cf. iii. 92. 1) is called ‘Assyria’ also in the Minaean inscriptions (from South Arabia, which go back to ninth century B. C.). Hence in his Ἀσσύριοι λόγοι (cf. App. II, § 6) H. includes both the Assyrian and the Babylonian Empire (cc. 106, 184). The confusion was natural, owing to (1) H.'s ignorance, especially of Assyria. (2) The identity of their religion and culture. (3) The fact that Babylon was often a vassal of Nineveh. But the two empires were historically and ethnographically distinct. We may compare the similar identification of Medes and Persians by the Greeks.

ἄλλα πολίσματα: this is correct; the land is full of ruins. Cf. a striking passage in Layard, Nineveh and Babylon (1853), p. 245, beginning ‘On all sides, as far as eye could see, rose the grasscovered heaps, marking the site of ancient habitations. The great tide of civilization had long since ebbed, leaving the wrecks on the solitary shore’. This refers to the district west of Mosul, i. e. near the site of Nineveh.

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