Kitabı oku: «The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6)», sayfa 16

The chronology which can be deduced from the data found in the announcements of the two prophets gives us the period from 640 to 625 B.C. for the invasion of Hither Asia by the Scythians, and this completely agrees with the statements of Herodotus. In order to avenge the death of his father Phraortes, who fell, with the greater part of his army, before the Assyrians, Cyaxares, according to Herodotus, immediately after his accession, i. e. in the year 633 B.C., set out against Nineveh. During his siege of Nineveh, the incursion of the Scythians into Media took place. According to this, Herodotus placed the commencement of the invasion of Media by the Scythians in the year 633 B.C. or 632 B.C. The chronographers, Eusebius and Hieronymus, put the invasion at the same time; they observe, the first at the year 632 B.C., the second at the year 634 B.C., that "the Scythians forced their way as far as Palestine." Syncellus gives only the general statement, that in the days of king Josiah, Palestine was overrun by the Scythians, and the city of Bethshan taken by them, whence its name.⁵³⁸

The name Scythians, as has been already remarked, was applied by the Greeks and Romans in a wider sense to all the nomadic and equestrian tribes of the North; it was a comprehensive title for almost all the whole complex of the northern nations. To which nation of the Scythians, we may ask, did these hordes belong, which in the period just fixed, i. e. between 632 and 625 B.C., invaded and laid waste Hither Asia, from the Caucasus to Egypt? According to Herodotus, they were the ancestors of the Scythians between the Danube and the Don, the Scoloti. Herodotus represents them as invading Asia in their pursuit of the Cimmerians. But what reason was there for the pursuit, when the Cimmerians had voluntarily abandoned the land which the Scoloti desired? Besides, for more than a century before the date at which Herodotus represents them as flying to Asia before the Scythians, the Cimmerians were settled on the Halys, and must have been well known to the nations of Asia Minor; and ever since the emigration of the Cimmerians, i. e. for an equal period, the Scoloti had possessed the old abodes of the Cimmerians on the Pontus. What could have induced the Scoloti to undertake such a pursuit a good hundred years later? What made them miss the way, and come into Media instead of Cappadocia? Herodotus tells us that the Scoloti had taken a far longer route than that which led past Colchis, to Asia, so that they came out in Media, with the Caucasus on the right hand. By this "upper way," the pass of Derbend, on the Caspian Sea, may be meant, which would have brought the hordes of the North into Media through the land of the Cadusians, who were hostile to the Medes; but if we measure from the banks of the Don, where, according to Herodotus' narrative, we have to conceive the Scoloti as situated in their advance upon the Cimmerians from the East, this route could hardly be described as much longer than that by Colchis. By the upper route Herodotus apparently means the route round the Caspian Sea. The supposed error in the proper route may lead us into the right path, if we assume that the hordes which then invaded Media and inundated Asia were not mounted nomads from the steppes above the Black Sea, on the upper course of the Don, but nomads dwelling beyond the Caspian, in the steppes on the Oxus and Jaxartes. The legendary poetry of East Iran is filled with long and mighty struggles of the ancient heroes with those nations; and Ctesias tells us, again, without doubt, following the minstrelsy of West Iran, of the severe and doubtful wars which the predecessor of Astyages of Media, whom he calls Artæus, and Herodotus Cyaxares, carried on against the Sacæ, the neighbours of the Parthians and Hyrcanians in the steppes on the Oxus. It was these Sacæ who, four centuries after the invasion of Media by Herodotus' Scythians, burst through Parthia and Hyrcania, possessed themselves of the valleys of the Hilmend, the best region in the east of Iran, and gave to this region the name of Sikashtan, i. e. land of the Sacæ, now Sedshestan. On the earlier occasion the Sacæ may have made the same attempt to break into Iran. If nations on the steppes on the Oxus had overpowered Media, if they had also established themselves in Hither Asia, youthful bands of Sarmatians and Scoloti might have felt tempted to go out from the Pontus and take part in the campaign of plunder. In ascribing the invasion of Asia to the Scoloti, Herodotus no doubt followed the authority of his own people, the Greek settlers on the northern coast of the Pontus. The Cimmerians had once dwelt in these regions, and had retired from them before the Scoloti. It happened that at the time of king Ardys of Lydia (his reign, according to Herodotus, extended from 681 B.C. to 632 B.C.), these Cimmerians made an incursion into the west of Asia Minor from the abodes which they had obtained on the Halys, and forced their way at that time as far as Lydia and the Greek cities on the coast. They took Sardis, except the Acropolis. "It was not a subjugation of the cities," says Herodotus, "but only a passing raid."⁵³⁹ The narrative of Herodotus proves conclusively that he knew nothing of the earlier incursions of the Cimmerians into the west of Asia Minor, and therefore he assumed that this campaign against Sardis and the cities of the Greeks, in the time of Ardys, was identical in date, and, in fact, the same as the incursion of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor. And as Herodotus also learnt that Cyaxares of Media was overthrown by Scythian hordes who devastated all Asia, and that fugitives of these hordes had also come into the west of Asia Minor to the grandson of Ardys, Alyattes of Lydia, he represents the Cimmerians as being pursued towards Asia, along the Pontus, by their ancient enemies, the Scoloti, who, he thinks, missed their way. He was evidently confirmed in this opinion by the fact that certain families of the Scoloti suffered from a loss of sexual power (p. 258), a disease which the Greeks on the Pontus attributed to the anger of Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of fertility, whose oldest and most famous temple was at Ascalon, in Syria. Hippocrates says that this disease showed itself among the wealthiest families of the Scoloti, and not among the poor, because the former were always on horseback;⁵⁴⁰ according to Aristotle the disease was hereditary in the royal family of the Scythians.⁵⁴¹ Lastly, a story of the slaves of the Scythians, who, in the absence of their masters, had made themselves masters, helped to attribute the invasion of Asia to this nation of the Scythians. The basis of the story, which obviously belongs to the Crimea, lies in the fact that after the Scoloti had forced the Tauri, the ancient inhabitants of the Crimea, into the mountains of this peninsula, and had subjugated and made slaves of those who remained behind in the plains, both the one and the other must have seized a favourable opportunity to make themselves again masters of the peninsula, and close it against the Scoloti by means of a trench. The supposed effect of the whips is due, no doubt, to the Hellenes in Scythia, who thus marked the nature and the existence of slavery.

The liberation of the Medes from the dominion of the Assyrians must not only have taken place later, but in a different manner from that narrated by Herodotus. The inscriptions of the kings of Asshur showed us that the tribes of the Medes whom Herodotus calls Arizantes, Busæ, Struchatæ, Budæans, and Parætaceni, lived separately, under a number of princes. Not long after the settlement of the Israelites in the cities of the Medes, in the year 715 B.C., Sargon represents a prince Dayaukka as carried away captive with his people; and in 713 B.C. he takes the field against Bit Dayauku, and receives tribute from 45 princes of the Medes (p. 101). Hence among the regions of the chieftains of Media, there was a region which the Assyrians called the land or house of Dayauku, just as with them Israel was Bit Omri. Deioces, the prince from whom Bit Dayauku received its name, who, in Herodotus, is a son of Phraortes, must in consequence have founded a sovereignty in Media, or at any rate have been at the head of a sovereignty derived from his father, about the year 720 B.C. at the lowest. We may without hesitation look for this region in the land of Ecbatana, but at that time it cannot have taken up a large part of Media. Neither the inscriptions of Sargon, nor those of his successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal, mention Deioces or his land either in the payment of tribute by the Medes, or in the conquest of the separate tribes. Nothing is said of any central monarchy among the Medes, or of a kingdom of the Medes. If Media had been united and free at the time of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, Sennacherib would not have marched against Syria and Cilicia, nor Esarhaddon against Egypt; they would not and could not have left in the rear, in the most threatening proximity, the most dangerous enemy. If we nevertheless assume that during the sway of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon over Assyria the influence of Deioces steadily increased, we must concede to Herodotus that this higher position was gained not by martial deeds, but by craft and advice urging union. Then Phraortes, who, according to Herodotus, succeeded his father Deioces in the year 655B.C., must have been able formally to assemble the tribes of the Medes round Bit Dayauku, and to organise them: it was he who united Media under his dominion. But we cannot place this union earlier than the period at which Assurbanipal destroyed Elam, and directed his arms against Arabia (p. 177): i. e. it must come after the year 645 B.C. Assurbanipal could not possibly employ his troops in repeated campaigns for the maintenance of Egypt, the reconquest of Babylon, the destruction of Elam, and the punishment of the Arabians, if a strong and compact force stood behind the passes of the Zagrus; still less could he look idly on while Phraortes subjugated the Persians, and then one nation after another in Asia, as Herodotus supposes, with the view of throwing himself on Assyria – if he could prevent it. The more probable course of events is, that Phraortes, as soon as he accomplished the union of the Median tribes, had to await and repel the attack of Assyria – that the tribes of the Persians among whom, precisely about this time, Achæmenes obtained the first place,⁵⁴² being threatened by the extension of the dominion of Assyria over Elam on their borders, combined with Phraortes for common defence, and consented to be led by the stronger nation. The tradition of the Medes, and their poems, on which the statements of Herodotus rest, would naturally antedate the liberation of their nation, and would place it in the times before Deioces; they would even ascribe conquests to Phraortes, and represent him as falling in an attack on Nineveh. It agrees with the position of affairs and the relation of the powers, that Phraortes should have fallen with the greater part of his army, as Herodotus says, in repulsing Assyria and Assurbanipal in the year 633 B.C. The first duty of his son Cyaxares must have been to avert from Media the consequences of the heavy defeat which destroyed his father. That Cyaxares, and not Phraortes, a century after the death of the latter, passed in the nation of the Medes as the founder of the Median supremacy, is clear from the fact that Phraortes, the head of the rebellion of the Medians against Darius, lays aside his proper name in order to call himself "Kshatrita, descendant of Cyaxares," and that at this time the leader of the Sagartians also gives himself out as a descendant of Cyaxares of Media.

Let us first cling to the fact that in the decade which followed the conquest of Elam by Assurbanipal (644-634 B.C.) Media united her tribes under a sovereign, and freed herself from the dominion of Assyria, and in combination with the Persians on the East obtained the position of a considerable power beside Assyria. In the West, before this date, Assurbanipal had already lost the dominion over Egypt, and the advance of Psammetichus towards Syria (p. 180) must have made the obedience of the Syrian cities and princes doubtful. The rise of the Medes under Phraortes, the successful resistance which they made to Assyria, must have had a far-reaching influence. After such a long series of successes the arms of Assyria could not prevail against this new power. In Judah, where the prophets of the Hebrews from the second half of the eighth century had looked on Assyria as the instrument of Jehovah for the visitation of the nations and the punishment of the sins of Israel and Judah, the position of that power, soon after the year 640 B.C., was seriously shattered or threatened, since the prophet Nahum, when looking back on the destruction of Thebes by the army of Assurbanipal, could already announce that the line of destruction would reach even to Assyria and Nineveh. The lively description of the defenders and the devastation of Thebes, shows that the capture (which had taken place in the year 663 B.C.)⁵⁴³ was already fresh in the remembrance of the Syrians. "The lion," so we find it in Nahum, "did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin. I am against thee, saith Jehovah of Hosts, and I will burn thy chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions; and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messenger shall no more be heard. I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile. Woe to the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcraft; woe to the bloody city; it is full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not. The noise of the whip, and of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots; the horseman cometh on, the bright sword and glittering spear." "Art thou better than No-Ammon (Thebes) that was situate by the Nile?"⁵⁴⁴ "The destroyer is come up before thee, Nineveh; keep the munition, watch the way, gird thy loins, fortify thyself mightily. Draw thee water for the siege, fortify thy strongholds; go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. Thy mighty men hasten to the walls, but they stumble in their walk. The covering shall be prepared for the besiegers. All thy strongholds shall be fig-trees with the first ripe figs; if they be shaken they shall fall even into the mouth of the eater. Fire shall devour thee, and the sword shall cut thee off."⁵⁴⁵ "With an overrunning flood Jehovah will make an utter end of her habitations; the gates of the river shall be opened, and the palace dissolved. Behold, thy people are women for thy enemies; the gates of thy land shall be set wide open; the fire shall devour thy bars. Nineveh was full of men while she stood, but they flee. Halt! halt! Yet no one turneth; her maids sigh like doves, and beat the breast. Take the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold; there is no end of the store; abundance of all kinds of costly vessels. She is empty, and void, and waste, and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; there is no end of their corpses. They stumble on the corpses. Thy captains fly, O king of Assyria, thy mighty men slumber, thy people is scattered on the mountains, and no man gathereth them. Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion, and the lioness, and the lion's whelp walked and none made them afraid? No more of thy name shall be sown; there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous. All that look on thee shall flee from thee and say, Nineveh is laid waste; all that hear of thee shall clap their hands over thee, for upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually?"⁵⁴⁶

How far the successes which Cyaxares obtained soon after his accession (633 B.C.) in repelling and attacking Assyria and Assurbanipal carried him – whether even then the army of the Medes advanced to the walls of Nineveh, as Herodotus states, cannot be ascertained, and cannot be denied. Whatever advantage Media may have obtained at that time it was not only lost, but the Median empire collapsed, when Cyaxares had vainly attempted to repulse the Sacæ (632 B.C.). These Sacæ, however, were not content with the possession of Media; they descended from the table-land of Iran into the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and spread over Hither Asia. We saw how clearly the prophet Zephaniah announced in those days (about 630 B.C.) the great judgments that would come upon Nineveh and Judah, on Gaza and Ascalon, on Ashdod, and Ekron, and Ethiopia. "Jehovah," he says, "will stretch out his hand against the North, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations; the pelican and the bittern shall lodge in the lintels of it; the birds shall sing in the windows of it; desolation shall be on the thresholds. The cedar work is torn down. All who go by shall hiss and wag the hand. This is the rejoicing city which dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am and there is none beside me! How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!"⁵⁴⁷

Assurbanipal, as we saw, ascended the throne of Assyria in the year 668 B.C., and he retained it till the year 626 B.C. Though we have no evidence from Assyrian inscriptions to fix the end of his reign, the canon of Ptolemy puts the end of the dominion of Saosduchin (by whom is meant Samul-sum-ukin) in the year 648 B.C., i. e. in the year in which Assurbanipal crushed his rebellion and took Babylon. We also possess an Assyrian tablet which dates from the twentieth year of Assurbanipal in Babylon, and consequently extends his reign in the city from 648 B.C. to 628 B.C. Further, the canon of Ptolemy represents a new reign as commencing in Babylon in the year 625 B.C., and therefore we are certain that Assurbanipal remained on the throne for 42 years, down to 626 B.C.⁵⁴⁸ The first half of his reign was filled with the most brilliant successes; his armies marched to Thebes, Babylon, and Susa; but the second half was the reverse of the first. Egypt was lost. Serious struggles without results were carried on against the Medes, though they were once varied by a great victory. The Median power advanced nearer and nearer to the native land and the chief cities. The Medes had indeed been compelled to turn against the Sacæ; but these not only overthrew Media, they covered Asia, destroyed the cohesion of the Assyrian kingdom, and entirely disorganised it. Cleitarchus narrated: "Sardanapalus (Assurbanipal) died in old age, after the dominion of the Syrians had been broken down;"⁵⁴⁹ and the Syrians, according to the usage of Cleitarchus, are the Assyrians.

Ctesias told us above, that the dominion of the Assyrians succumbed to the united efforts of the viceroys of Media and Babylon, the combined efforts of the Medes and Babylonians. Herodotus, as we saw, represents a prince of Babylon as negotiating peace between Lydia and Media. In an excerpt of Abydenus which has been preserved we read: "After Sardanapalus (Assurbanipal), Saracus reigned over Assyria: when he found that multitudes of a collected horde came up from the sea like locusts, he at once sent Busalossorus as commander of the army to Babylon. This officer resolved on rebellion, and betrothed his son Nabukodrossorus to the daughter of Astyages, king of Media, Amuhea by name."⁵⁵⁰ According to the excerpt of Syncellus, Alexander Polyhistor gave the following account: Saracus sent Nabopolassar as general, but he married Amyite the daughter of Astyages, the satrap of the Medes, to his son Nabuchodonossor, and rebelled against Saracus and Nineveh.⁵⁵¹ Hence in Abydenus and Polyhistor, the successor of Assurbanipal on the throne of Assyria was Saracus. Against hosts who came from the sea, i. e. against the hosts of the Sacæ coming up from the Caspian Sea, or marching, on their return from Syria, i. e. from the Mediterranean, against Babylon, he sends the general whom Abydenus calls Busalossorus, and Polyhistor Nabopolassar. According to the canon of Ptolemy, the reign of Nabopolassar in Babylon begins in the year 625 B.C. This prince, the Nabopolassar of the canon and Polyhistor, is not distinct from the Busalossorus of Abydenus. It is the same name: in the one writer he is the father of Nabukodrossorus, in the other the father of Nabuchodonossor. Nabukodrossorus is Nabukudurussur; Nabuchodonossor is Nebuchadnezzar, the corrupted Hebrew form of the name Nabukudurussur. The Belesys of Ctesias, the confederate of the Mede, is Nabopolassar. In both fragments Nabopolassar, whom the king of the Assyrians sends as a viceroy or general to Babylonia, and whose rule over Babylonia begins with the year 625 B.C., resolves to rebel against the king of Assyria; with this object he enters into a league with the king or satrap, i. e. the Assyrian viceroy of Media, who in Abydenus and Polyhistor is called Astyages.⁵⁵² In both fragments Nabopolassar marries his son Nebuchadnezzar to Amuhea or Amyite, the daughter of the Mede. Astyages was the son of Cyaxares of Media, who began to reign in the year 593 B.C. Hence in both fragments the father must be put in the place of the son, just as in Herodotus the Nabopolassar of Polyhistor must be put in the place of Labynetus.

The invasion of the Sacæ certainly gave the most severe blow to the Assyrian kingdom: it reached the native territory, and broke the cohesion of the kingdom. The lands previously subjugated could not be protected, and therefore could not be maintained. We found above, that about the year 625 B.C., the Sacæ marched through Syria to the borders of Egypt. It is also certain, from the canon of Ptolemy, that it was the king of Assyria who succeeded Assurbanipal on the throne in 626 B.C., who named Nabopolassar his viceroy in Babylon, in order to protect Babylonia against the Sacæ. Nabopolassar cannot have entered into a league with Cyaxares of Media; Babylonia cannot have broken with Assyria; the rebellion against Saracus cannot have taken place, till Cyaxares was again master in his own land and the Sacæ were driven out of Media, whether this expulsion took place as recorded in Herodotus or in some other way. That Nabopolassar felt himself called upon to draw the league with Media as close as possible is clear from the fact that he at the same time married his son to the daughter of the king of Media. And he not only brought about this marriage, he did away with the war between Media and Lydia, and established an alliance between the royal families of the two nations. This war must be placed before the destruction of Assyria; had it not been necessary to set the forces of Media free against Assyria, the prince of Babylon would have had no interest in reconciling the differences between Lydia and Babylonia. After the destruction of Assyria it would have been much more advisable for Babylon that Media, whose power surpassed that of Babylonia, should be engaged elsewhere. This conclusion is confirmed by the eclipse which separated the armies of the Lydians and the Medes in the sixth year of the war, in the middle of a battle (p. 260). This took place in the year 610 B.C.⁵⁵³ The war between Cyaxares of Media and Alyattes of Lydia must therefore have begun in the year 615 B.C.

But what caused Media to be at war with the distant land of Lydia? We must assume that Cyaxares first succeeded in setting his land free from the hordes of the Sacæ. He availed himself of this to give aid to the lands bordering on the west of Media, the Armenians and Cappadocians, against the same plundering tribes; to exhibit himself there as a liberator from the Sacæ; and, at the same time, as a liberator from the dominion of the Assyrians. In this way he quickly advanced the borders of Media to the Halys. Here he came upon the Lydians, who on their part had made use of the convulsion and confusion which had been caused by the advance of the Cimmerians as far as the western shore of Asia Minor, to extend their dominion over Phrygia as far as the Halys. As the war between him and the Lydians commences in the year 615 B.C., Cyaxares must have mastered the Sacæ in Media as early as the year 620 B.C. The dominion of the Scythians in Asia, which Herodotus represents as lasting 28 years, is thus narrowed down to a short ten years – or indeed to eight years, the number given by Justin. From this point – the liberation of Media from the Sacæ, i. e. about 620 B.C., – we have to fix not only the advance of Cyaxares to the West, but his league with Nabopolassar of Babylon, and the marriage of his daughter to Nabopolassar's son must be put about the same time. When Nabopolassar had arranged the peace between Media and Lydia, which fixed the Halys as the border of the two kingdoms, Aryanis, the daughter of Alyattes, is married to the son of Cyaxares (610 B.C.), Media and Babylonia, Cyaxares and Nabopolassar, unite their forces against Assyria.

On the ruins of Chalah, in the south-east corner of the terrace, on which stand the palaces of the kings of Asshur, to the south of the ruins of the house of Samsi-Bin III. (II. 325), are the remains of a not very extensive building; some bricks bear the inscription: "I Assur-idil-ili, king of the nations, king of the land of Asshur, son of Assurbanipal, king of the nations, king of the land of Asshur, son of Esarhaddon, king of Asshur. I caused bricks and beams to be prepared for the building of the house of salvation, situated at Chalah: for the life of my soul I did this."⁵⁵⁴ Another inscription of Assur-idil-ili mentions his restoration of the temple of Nebo at Chalah.⁵⁵⁵ Hence we must assume that Assur-idil-ili, the son of Assurbanipal, ascended the throne of Assyria after the death of his father, in the year 626 B.C.; that it is he who is called Saracus in Polyhistor, who appointed Nabopolassar viceroy of Babylonia, in order to maintain Babylon against the Sacæ; and that about the year 620 B.C. the latter broke away from Assur-idil-ili. Yet from a broken tablet of Assur-idil-ili, recently discovered, we shall gather that he did not ascend the throne immediately after his father's death, but later;⁵⁵⁶ and the opinion is held that the immediate successor of Assurbanipal was Bel-zakir-iskun, whose name occurs in a cylinder found at Kuyundshik. The name of the father of this king is broken off; and he is only placed immediately after Assurbanipal because he styles himself, not only king of Assyria, but also king of Sumir and Accad.⁵⁵⁷ But are there not numerous instances to prove that titles of dominion are retained after the lands which they denote as subject have long been lost? Lastly, in two fragmentary tablets the name of Cyaxares is supposed to be concealed in the form Castarit. The first fragment mentions Esarhaddon and Castarit, the lord of the city of Carcassi, beside Mamiti-arsu, the lord of the city of the Medes. At the very earliest, Cyaxares of Media cannot have been born when Esarhaddon died. The second fragment speaks of a hundred days of prayer and thanksgiving, because Castarit with his warriors, and the warriors of the Cimmerians, and the warriors of the Mannai, had taken the towns of Khartam and Kissassu. But here also the inscription seems to be speaking of another period, and indeed of conflicts from the days of Esarhaddon, when the Cimmerians set foot on the southern shore of the Black Sea; and I would not, on this account, allow myself to be led astray, even if a third tablet, supposed to narrate the same circumstances, should mention Castarit as a prince of the Medes.⁵⁵⁸

Of the incidents of the war, which Cyaxares and Nabopolassar commenced in the year 609B.C. against Assyria, we have no account. According to the songs of the Medes, which lie at the base of the account of Ctesias, it continued three years; many severe battles were fought, with varying fortune, before Nineveh could be invested. The capture of the city was finally achieved, because the Tigris carried away a portion of the city walls. When Xenophon marched past Chalah, which he calls Larissa, 200 years after the fall of Nineveh, and found long strips of wall 120 feet high still standing, he was informed that the king of the Persians, when he took the dominion from the Medes, could not by any means capture the lofty and strong walls of this city of the Medes (II. 16). A cloud hid the sun, and made the city invisible till the inhabitants had left it; and thus it was taken. At that time the queen of the Medes fled to Mespila (the name given by Xenophon to Nineveh), where he saw the walls still standing of the height of 150 feet. This city the king of the Persians could not take, either by length of siege or by storm, till Zeus had dazed the inhabitants by lightning: then the city was taken.⁵⁵⁹

The memory of the Assyrian kingdom had at that time so entirely disappeared, that Xenophon's guides could put the Medes in the place of the Persians, the Persians in the place of the Medes, and the king of the Persians in the place of Cyaxares. In Abydenus we are told, after the excerpt of Eusebius: Nabopolassar (Bussalossorus), after marrying his son to the daughter of the king of the Medes, marched against Nineveh. "When Saracus heard of this, he burnt himself and the royal citadel."⁵⁶⁰ Polyhistor, following the excerpt of Syncellus, tells us: Nabopolassar, sent out by Saracus as a leader of his army, turned against his master, and marched against Nineveh. In fear of his approach, Saracus burnt himself with his palace.⁵⁶¹ Strabo tells us: "Nineveh was destroyed soon after the break up of the dominion of the Medes."⁵⁶² At the year 607 B.C., Eusebius and Hieronymus observe: "Cyaxares the Mede destroys Nineveh."