he bruit of thee clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not
thy wickedness passed continually?"

On this occasion Nineveh escaped the fate with which the prophet had
threatened it, but its safety was dearly bought. According to the
tradition accepted in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of
Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the
Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on
the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves
through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into
contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the
Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of Nineveh.
This crisis in the history of Asia was certainly not determined by
chance. For eighty years Assyria had been in contact with the Scythians,
and the Assyrian kings had never ceased to keep an eye upon their
movements, or lose sight of the advantage to which their bellicose
temper might be turned in circumstances like the present. They had
pitted them against the Cimmerians, then against the Medes, and probably
against the kings of Urartu as well, and the intimacy between the two
peoples came to be so close that the Scythian king Bartatua did not
hesitate to demand one of the daughters of Bsarhaddon in marriage. From
the very beginning of his reign Assur-bani-pal had shown them the
utmost consideration, and when King Madyes, son of his ally Bartatua,
intervened thus opportunely in the struggle, he did so, not by mere
chance, as tradition would have us believe, but at the urgent request of
Assyria. He attacked Media in the rear, and Cyaxares, compelled to raise
the siege of Nineveh, hastened to join battle with him. The engagement
probably took place on the banks of the Lower Araxes or to the north of
Lake Urumiah, in the region formerly inhabited by the Mannai; but after
defeating his foe and dictating to him the terms of submission, Madyes,
carried away by the lust of conquest, did not hesitate to turn his arms
against his ally. Exhausted by her recent struggle, Assyria lay at his
mercy, her fortresses alone being able to offer any serious resistance:
he overran the country from end to end, and though the walled cities
withstood the fury of his attack, the rural districts were plundered
right and left, and laid desolate for many a year to come. The Scythians
of this epoch probably resembled those whom we fin