y be owned, that at all times, and in
all conditions, there have been women, who by a real and solid merit have
distinguished themselves above their sex; as there have been innumerable
instances of men, who by their defects have dishonoured theirs. But these
are only particular cases, which form no rule, and which ought not to
prevail against an establishment founded in nature, and prescribed by the
Creator himself.

(M158) NINYAS.(1004) This prince was in no respect like those from whom he
received his birth, and to whose throne he succeeded. Wholly intent upon
his pleasures, he kept himself shut up in his palace, and seldom showed
himself to his people. To keep them in their duty, he had always at
Nineveh a certain number of regular troops, furnished every year from the
several provinces of his empire, at the expiration of which term they were
succeeded by the like number of other troops on the same conditions; the
king putting a commander at the head of them, on whose fidelity he could
depend. He made use of this method, that the officers might not have time
to gain the affections of the soldiers, and so form any conspiracies
against him.

His successors for thirty generations followed his example and even
surpassed him in indolence. Their history is absolutely unknown, there
remaining no footsteps of it.

(M159) In Abraham's time the Scripture speaks of Amraphael, king of
Shinar, the country where Babylon was situated, who with two other princes
followed Chedorlaomer, king of the Elamites, whose tributary he probably
was, in the war carried on by the latter against five kings of the land of
Canaan.

(M160) It was under the government of these inactive princes, that
Sesostris, king of Egypt, extended his conquests so far in the East. But
as his power was of a short duration, and not supported by his successors,
the Assyrian empire soon returned to its former state.

(M161) Plato, a curious observer of antiquities, makes the kingdom of
Troy, in the time of Priam, dependent on the Assyrian empire.(1005) And
Ctesias says, that Teutamus, the twentieth king after Ninyas, sent a
considerable body of troops to the assistance of the Trojans, under the
conduct of Memnon, the son of Tithonus, at a time when the Assyrian empire
had subsisted above a thousand years; which agrees exactly with the time,
wherein I have placed the foundation of that empire. But the silence of
Homer concerning so mighty a people, and one which m