Nineveh. The
revolutionary spirit increased in the provinces, a great insurrection
became imminent, and was ready to break out on the slightest excuse. At
this period, B.C. 804, it is that the British Museum tablet registers,
as a memorable fact in the column of events, "Peace in the land." Two
great plagues are also mentioned under this reign, in 811 and 805, and
on the 13th of June, B.C. 809--30 Sivan in the eponymos of
Bur-el-salkhi--an almost total eclipse of the sun, visible at Nineveh.

The revolution was not long in coming. Asshurlikhish [Assurbanipal]
ascended the throne in B.C. 800, and fixed his residence at Nineveh,
instead of Ellasar, where his predecessor had lived after quitting
Nineveh; he is the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, the ever-famous prototype
of the voluptuous and effeminate prince. The tablet in the British
Museum only mentions two expeditions in his reign, both of small
importance, in 795 and 794; to all the other years the only notice is
"in the country," proving that nothing was done and that all thought of
war was abandoned.

Sardanapalus had entirely given himself up to the orgies of his harem,
and never left his palace walls, entirely renouncing all manly and
warlike habits of life. He had reigned thus for seven years, and
discontent continued to increase; the desire for independence was
spreading in the subject provinces; the bond of their obedience each
year relaxed still more, and was nearer breaking, when Arbaces, who
commanded the Median contingent of the army and was himself a Mede,
chanced to see in the palace at Nineveh the King, in a female dress,
spindle in hand, hiding in the retirement of the harem his slothful
cowardice and voluptuous life.

He considered that it would be easy to deal with a prince so degraded,
who would be unable to renew the valorous traditions of his ancestors.
The time seemed to him to have come when the provinces, held only by
force of arms, might finally throw off the weighty Assyrian yoke.
Arbaces communicated his ideas and projects to the prince then
intrusted with the government of Babylon, the Chaldaean Phul (Palia?),
surnamed Balazu (the Terrible), a name the Greeks have made into
Belesis; he entered into the plot with the willingness to be expected
from a Babylonian, one of a nation so frequently rising in revolt.

Arbaces and Balazu consulted with other chiefs, who commanded
contingents of foreign troops, and with the vassal kings of those
coun