s maintained over the whole of Chaldaea and Babylonia, with few
and brief interruptions, to the close of the Empire. The reluctant
victim struggles in his captor's grasp, and now and then for a short
space shakes it off; but only to be seized again with a fiercer gripe,
until at length his struggles cease, and he resigns himself to a fate
which he has come to regard as inevitable. During the last fifty years
of the Empire, from B.C. 650 to B.C. 625, the province of Babylon was
almost as tranquil as any other.

The pride of Sargon received at this time a gratification which he is
not able to conceal, in the homage which was paid to him by sovereigns
who had only heard of his fame, and who were safe from the attacks of
his armies. While he held his court at Babylon, in the year B.C. 708 or
707, he gave audience to two embassies from two opposite quarters, both
sent by islanders dwelling (as he expresses it) "in the middle of the
seas" that washed the outer skirts of his dominions. Upir, king of
Asmun, who ruled over an island in the Persian Gulf,--Khareg, perhaps,
or Bahrein,--sent messengers, who bore to the Great King the tribute of
the far East. Seven Cyprian monarchs, chiefs of a country which lay "at
the distance of seven days from the coast, in the sea of the setting
sun," offered him by their envoys the treasures of the West. The very
act of bringing presents implied submission; and the Cypriots not only
thus admitted his suzerainty, but consented to receive at his hands and
to bear back to their country a more evident token of subjection. This
was an effigy of the Great King carved in the usual form, and
accompanied with an inscription recording his name and titles, which was
set up at Idalium, nearly in the centre of the island, and made known to
the Cypriots the form and appearance of the sovereign whom it was not
likely that they would ever see.

The expeditions of Sargon to the north and north-east had results less
splendid than those which he undertook to the south-west and the south;
but it may be doubted whether they did not more severely try his
military skill and the valor of his soldiers. The mountain tribes of
Zagros, Taurus, and Niphates,--Medes, Armaenians, Tibarini, Moschi,
etc.,--were probably far braver men and far better soldiers than the
levies of Egypt, Susiana, and Babylon. Experience, moreover, had by this
time taught the tribes the wisdom of uniting against the common foe, and
we find Ambris