e has given us, in the Persian
archives, from whence he professed to derive his history, no confidence
can be placed in those points of his narrative which have not any
further sanction. All that we know on the subject of the last siege
of Nineveh is that it was conducted by a combined army of Medes
and Babylonians, the former commanded by Cyaxares, the latter by
Nabopolassar or Nebuchadnezzar, and that it was terminated, when
all hope was lost, by the suicide of the Assyrian monarch. The
self-immolation of Saracus is related by Abydenus, who almost certainly
follows Berosus in this part of his history. We may therefore accept
it as a fact about which there ought to be no question. Actuated by
a feeling which has more than once caused a vanquished monarch to die
rather than fall into the power of his enemies, Saracus made a funeral
pyre of his ancestral palace, and lighted it with his own hand.

One further point in the narrative of Ctesias we may suspect to contain
a true representation. Ctesias declared the cause of the capture to
have been the destruction of the city wall by an unexpected rise of the
river. Now, the prophet Nahum, in his announcement of the fate coming on
Nineveh, has a very remarkable expression, which seems most naturally to
point to some destruction of a portion of the fortifications by means of
water. After relating the steps that would be taken for the defence of
the place, he turns to remark on their fruitlessness, and says: "The
gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved; and Huzzab
is led away captive; she is led up, with her maidens, sighing as with
the voice of doves, smiting upon their breasts." Now, we have already
seen that at the northwest angle of Nineveh there was a sluice or
floodgate, intended mainly to keep the water of the Khosrsu, which
ordinarily filled the city moat, from flowing off too rapidly into the
Tigris, but probably intended also to keep back the water of the Tigris,
when that stream rose above its common level. A sudden and great rise
of the Tigris would necessarily endanger this gate, and if it gave way
beneath the pressure, a vast torrent of water would rush up the moat
along and against the northern wall, which may have been undermined by
its force, and have fallen in. The stream would then pour into the city;
and it may perhaps have reached the palace platform, which being made
of sun-dried bricks, and probably not cased with stone inside the
city