e placed himself at the head of his
troops, overcame the rebels, and was about to exterminate them, when his
hand was stayed by the defection of some Bactrian auxiliaries. He shut
himself up in Nineveh, and for two whole years heroically repulsed
all assaults; in the third year, the Tigris, swollen by the rains,
overflowed its banks and broke down the city walls for a distance of
twenty stadia. The king thereupon called to mind an oracle which had
promised him victory until the day when the river should betray him.
Judging that the prediction was about to be accomplished, he resolved
not to yield himself alive to the besieger, and setting fire to his
palace, perished therein, together with his children and his treasures,
about 788 B.C. Arbakes, thus rendered an independent sovereign, handed
down the monarchy to his son Mandaukas, and he in his turn was followed
successively by Sosarmos, Artykas, Arbianes, Artaios, Artynes, and
Astibaras.* These names are not the work of pure invention; they are
met with in more than one Assyrian text: among the petty kings who
paid tribute to Sargon are enumerated some which bear such names as
Mashdaku,** Ashpanda,*** Arbaku, and Khartukka,*** and many others, of
whom traces ought to be found some day among the archives of princely
families of later times.

* Oppert thought that the names given by Herodotus
represented "Aryanised forms of Turanian names, of which
Otesias has given the Persian translation."

** Mashdaku is identified by Post with the Mandaukas or
Maydaukas of Ctesias, which would then be a copyist's error
for Masdaukas. The identification with Vashd[t]aku, Vashtak,
the name of a fabulous king of Armenia, is rejected by Rost;
Mashdaku would be the Iranian Mazdaka, preserved in the
Mazakes of Arrian.

*** Ashpanda is the Aspandas or Aspadas which Ctesias gives
instead of the Astyages of Herodotus.

**** The name of Artykas is also found in the secondary form
Kardikoas, which is nearer the Khartukka of the Assyrian
texts.

There were in these archives, at the disposal of scribes and strangers
inclined to reconstruct the history of Asia, a supply of materials of
varying value--authentic documents inscribed on brick tablets, legends
of fabulous exploits, epic poems and records of real victories and
conquests, exaggerated in accordance with the vanity or the interest of
the composer: from these elemen