By Water & Blood

Chapter 17: Indian campaign continued

Diodorus’s Assyrian narrative here follows Ctesias’s Persica (Ninus and Semiramis). Ctesias does not use the name Nimrod.

^[4] When Stabrobates, the king of the Indians, heard of the immensity of the forces mentioned and of the exceedingly great preparations which had been made for the war, he was anxious to surpass Semiramis in every respect. ^[5] First of all, then, he made four thousand river boats out of reeds; for along its rivers and marshy places India produces a great abundance of reeds, so large in diameter that a man cannot easily put his arms about them;⁠^[44] and it is said, furthermore, that ships built of these are exceedingly serviceable, since this wood does not rot. ^[6] Moreover, he gave great care to the preparation of his arms and by visiting all India gathered a far greater force than that which had been collected by Semiramis. ^[7] Furthermore, p409 holding a hunt of the wild elephants and multiplying many times the number already at his disposal, he fitted them all out splendidly with such things as would strike terror in war; ^[8] and the consequence was that when they advanced to the attack the multitude of them as well as the towers upon their backs made them appear like a thing beyond the power of human nature to understand.