g of all that, in
the eyes of the many, invested its predecessor with glory; it seems in
no wise inferior in national vigour, in the number of its soldiers,
in the military renown of its chiefs, in the proud prosperity of its
people, or in the majesty of its gods; the present fabric is as spacious
and magnificent, it would seem, as that which has but just vanished into
the limbo of the past. No kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or
gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of Assyria in
the days succeeding its triumphs over Blam and Arabia: precisely at this
point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just
as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part
having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish
of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors
a little breathing-space. Half a century rolls by, during which we have
a dim perception of the subdued crash of falling empires, and of the
trampling of armies in fierce fight; then the curtain rises on an
utterly different drama, of which the plot has been woven behind the
scenes, and the exciting _motif_ has just come into play. We no longer
hear of Assyria and its kings; their palaces are in ruins; their last
faithful warriors sleep in unhonoured graves beneath the ashes of
their cities, their prowess is credited to the account of half a dozen
fabulous heroes such as Ninus, Sardanapalus, and Semiramis--heroes whose
names call up in the memory of succeeding generations only vague but
terrible images, such as the phantasies of a dream, which, although but
dimly remembered in the morning, makes the hair to stand on end with
terror. The nations which erewhile disputed the supremacy with Assyria
have either suffered a like eclipse--such as the Khati, Urartu, the
Cossaeans, and Elam--or have fallen like Egypt and Southern Syria into
the rank of second-rate powers. It is Chaldaea which is now in the van
of the nations, in company with Lydia and with Media, whose advent to
imperial power no one would have ventured to predict forty or fifty
years before.

The principality founded by Deiokes about the beginning of the seventh
century B.C., seemed at first destined to play but a modest part; it
shared the fortune of the semi-barbarous states with which the Ninevite
conquerors came in contact on the western boundary of the Iranian
plateau, and from which the governors