Babylon was also filled with the descendants of deportees, scattered throughout the suburbs. Few of these were willing to die in the cause of a Nebuchadnezzar. The cosmopolitanism of the great city, once the mark and buttress of its imperial might, now threatened it with anarchy. The Babylonians were bound to shrink from such a prospect, even at the cost of surrender to an alien master. Chaos, in Mesopotamia, had always been the ultimate nightmare. Men knew that in the beginning all the world had been under the sway of demons, uncontrollable and savage, until the gods, taking pity on mankind,
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