mages sufficiently
terrible to portray them. They had blotted out Nineveh from the list of
cities, humiliated Pharaoh, and subjugated Syria, and they had done
all this almost at their first appearance in the field--such a feat as
Assyria and Egypt in the plenitude of their strength had been unable to
accomplish: they had, moreover, destroyed Jerusalem and carried Judah
into captivity. There is nothing astonishing in the fact that this
Nebuchadrezzar, whose history is known to us almost entirely from Jewish
sources, should appear as a fated force let loose upon the world. "O
thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up
thyself into the scabbard; rest and be still! How canst thou be quiet,
seeing the Lord hath given thee a charge?" But his campaigns in
Syria and Africa, of which the echoes transmitted to us still seem so
formidable, were not nearly so terrible in reality as those in which
Blam had perished a century previously; they were, moreover, the only
conflicts which troubled the peace of his reign. The Arabian chroniclers
affirm, indeed, that the fabulous wealth of Yemen had incited him to
invade that region. Nebuchadrezzar, they relate, routed, not far from
the town of Dhat-irk, the Joctanides of Jorhom, who had barred his
road to the Kaabah, and after seizing Mecca, reached the borders of
the children of Himyra: the exhausted condition of his soldiers having
prevented him from pressing further forward in his career of conquest,
he retraced his steps and returned to Babylon with a great number of
prisoners, including two entire tribes, those of Hadhura and Uabar,
whom he established as colonists in Chaldaea.* He never passed in this
direction beyond the limits reached by Assur-bani-pal, and his exploits
were restricted to some successful raids against the tribes of Kedar and
Nabatsea.**

* Most of the Arabic legends relating to these conquests of
Nebuchadrezzar are indirectly derived from the biblical story; but it is
possible that the history of the expeditions against Central Arabia is
founded on fact.

** This seems to follow from Jeremiah's imprecations upon Kedar

The same reasons which at the commencement of his reign had restrained
his ambition to extend his dominions towards the east and north, were
operative up to the end of his life. Astyages had not inherited the
martial spirit of his father Cyaxares, and only one warlike expedition,
that against the Cadusians, is ascribed to