No pretender had started up to dispute his claims.

Doubtless his military prestige, and the probability that the soldiers would adopt his cause, had helped to keep back aspirants; but perhaps it was the promptness of his return, as much as anything, that caused the crisis to pass off without difficulty.
Nebuchadnezzar is the great monarch of the Babylonian Empire, which, lasting only 88 years--from B.C.625 to B.C.

538--was for nearly half the time under his sway.

Its military glory is due chiefly to him, while the constructive energy, which constitutes its especial characteristic, belongs to it still more markedly through his character and genius.
It is scarcely too much to say that, but for Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians would have had no place in history.

At any rate, their actual place is owing almost entirely to this prince, who to the military talents of an able general added a grandeur of artistic conception and a skill in construction which place him on a par with the greatest builders of antiquity.
We have no complete, or even general account of Nebuchadnezzar's wars.
Our chief, our almost sole, information concerning them is derived from the Jewish writers.