the capital city of Assyria, which was founded by Ashur the son of Shem (Gen. x. 11); or, as others read the text, by Nimrod the son of Cush. However this may have been, it must be owned that Nineveh was one of the largest and most ancient cities of the world. It is very difficult to assign exactly the time of its foundation; but it cannot have been long after the building of Babel. It was situated upon the banks of the Tigris; and in the time of the prophet Jonas, who was sent thither under Je-roboam II. king of Israel, and, as Calmet thinks, under the reign of Pul, father of Sardanapalus, king of Assyria, Nineveh was a very great city, its circuit being three days' journey (Jonah, iii. 3). Diodorus Siculus, who has given us the dimensions of this city, says that it was 480 stadia, or forty-seven miles, in circumference, and that it was surrounded with lofty walls and towers; the former being 200 feet in height, and so very broad that three chariots might drive along them abreast, and the latter 200 feet in height, and 1500 in number; and Strabo allows it to have been much greater than Babylon. Diodorus Siculus was, however, certainly mistaken in placing Nineveh on the Euphrates, since all historians as well as geographers who speak of that city, tell us in express terms that it was situated on the Tigris. At the time of Jonah's mission thither, it was so populous that it was reckoned to contain more than six score thousand persons who could not distinguish their right hand from their left (Jonah, iv. 11), which is generally explained of young children who had not yet attained to the use of reason; so that upon this principle it is computed that the inhabitants of Nineveh were then above 600,000 persons. Nineveh was taken by Arbaces and Belesis, in the year of the world 3257, under the reign of Sardanapalus, in the time of Ahaz, king of Judah, and about the epoch of the foundation of Rome. It was reduced a second time by Astyages and Nabopolassar, who took it from Chynaladus, king of Assyria, in the year 3378. After this time, Nineveh no more recovered its former splendour. It was so entirely ruined in the time of Lucianus Samosatensis, who lived under the Emperor Hadrian, that no traces of it could be found, nor so much as the place where it stood. However, it was rebuilt under the Persians, and again destroyed by the Saracens about the seventh century.