He was controverted by Ctesias, who, however, has mistaken mythology for history, and Greek romance owed to him its Ninus and Semiramis, its Ninyas and Sardanapalus.
During the siege of Bactra he met Semiramis, the wife of one of his officers, Onnes, whom he took from her husband and married.
After the death of Ninus, Semiramis, who was accused of causing it, erected to him a temple-tomb, nine stades high and ten stades broad, near Babylon.
It chanced that there existed on the polished surface of a cliff at Behistun in western Persia a tri-lingual inscription which, according to Diodorus, had been made by Queen Semiramis of Nineveh, but which, as is now known, was really the work of King Darius.
He is said to have flourished "even before the Trojan times," "when Semiramis was queen of the Assyrians."