he habit of drawing from the river
Litany, and from certain aqueducts which conducted the precious fluid
from springs in the mountains. The Tyrians, it is said, held out against
this pressure for five years, satisfying their thirst with rain water,
which they collected in reservoirs. Whether they then submitted, or
whether the attempt to subdue them was given up, is uncertain, since the
quotation from Menander, which is our sole authority for this passage of
history, here breaks off abruptly.

The short reign of Shalmaneser IV, was, it is evident, sufficiently
occupied by the two enterprises of which accounts have now been
given--the complete subjugation of Samaria, and the attempt to reduce
the island Tyre. Indeed, it is probable that neither enterprise had been
conducted when a dynastic revolution, caused by the ambition of a
subject, brought the unhappy monarch's reign to an untimely end. The
conquest of Samaria is claimed by Sargon as an event of his first year;
and the resistance of the Tyrians, if it really continued during the
full space assigned to it by Menander, must have extended beyond the
terns of Shalmaneser's reign, into the first or second year of his
successor. It was probably the prolonged absence of the Assyrian monarch
from his capital, caused by the obstinacy of the two cities which he was
attacking, that encouraged a rival to come forward and seize the throne;
just as in the Persian history we shall find the prolonged absence of
Canbyses in Egypt produce a revolution and change of dynasty at Susa. In
the East, where the monarch is not merely the chief but the sole power
in the state, the moving spring whose action must be continually exerted
to prevent the machinery of government from standing still, it is always
dangerous for the reigning prince to be long away from his metropolis.
The Orientals do not use the language of mere unmeaning compliment when
they compare their sovereigns with the sun, and speak of them as
imparting light and life to the country and people over which they rule.
In the king's absence all languishes; the course of justice is
suspended; public works are stopped; the expenditure of the Court, on
which the prosperity of the capital mainly depends, being withdrawn,
trade stagnates, the highest branches suffering most; artists are left
without employment; work-men are discharged; wages fall; every industry
is more or less deranged, and those engaged in it suffer accordingly;
no