bmission, and triumphant return
succeeded one another with monotonous uniformity. The style of the court
historians of Assyria does not improve as time goes on. Nothing can well
be more dry and commonplace than the historical literature of this
period, which recalls the early efforts of the Greeks in this
department, and exhibits a decided inferiority to the compositions of
Stowe and Holinshed. The historiographer of Tiglath-Pileser I., between
two and three centuries earlier, is much superior, as a writer, to those
of the period to which we are come, who eschew all graces of style,
contenting themselves with the curtest and dryest of phrases, and with
sentences modelled on a single unvarying type.

Instead, therefore, of following in the direct track of the annalist
whom Shalmaneser employed to record his exploits, and proceeding to
analyze his account of the twenty-seven campaigns belonging to this
reign, I shall simply present the reader with the general result in a
few words, and then draw his special attention to a few of the
expeditions which are of more than common importance.

It appears, then, that Shalmaneser, during the first twenty-seven years
of his reign, led in person twenty-three expeditions into the
territories of his neighbors, attacking in the course of these inroads,
besides petty tribes, the following nations and countries:--Babylonia,
Chaldaea, Media, the Zimri, Armenia, Upper Mesopotamia, the country
about the head-streams of the Tigris, the Hittites, the Patena, the
Tibareni, the Hamathites, and the Syrians of Damascus. He took tribute
during the same time from the Phoenieian cities of Tyre, Sidon, and
Byblus, from the Tsukhi or Shuhites, from the people of Muzr, from the
Bartsu or Partsu, who are almost certainly the Persians, and from the
Israelites. He thus traversed in person the entire country between the
Persian Gulf on the south and Mount Niphates upon the north, and between
the Zagros range (or perhaps the Persian desert) eastward, and, westward,
the shores of the Mediterranean. Over the whole of this region he made
his power felt, and even beyond it the nations feared him and gladly
placed themselves under his protection. During the later years of his
reign, when he was becoming less fit for warlike toils, he seems in
general to have deputed the command of his armies to a subject in whom
he had great confidence, a noble named Dayan-Asshur. This chief, who
held an important office as ear