request thus powerfully
backed, and perhaps sufficiently wise to see that the interests of
Susiana required an independent Babylon, set his troops in motion
without any delay, and advanced to the banks of the Tigris. At the same
time a number of the Aramaean tribes on the middle Euphrates, which
Sennacherib had reduced in his third year, revolted, and sent their
forces to swell the army of Susub. A great battle was fought at Khaluli,
a town on the lower Tigris, between the troops of Sennacherib and this
allied host; the combat was long and bloody, but at last the Assyrians
conquered. Susub and his Elamitic ally took to flight and made their
escape. Nebosumiskun, a son of Merodach-Baladan, and many other chiefs
of high rank, were captured. The army was completely routed and broken
up. Babylon submitted, and was severely punished; the fortifications
were destroyed, the temples plundered and burnt, and the images of the
gods broken to pieces. Perhaps the rebel city now received for viceroy
Regibelus or Mesesimordachus, whom the Canon of Ptolemy, which is silent
about Susub, makes contemporary with the middle portion of Sennacherib's
reign.

The only other expedition which can be assigned, on important evidence,
to the reign of Sennacherib, is one against Cilicia, in which he is said
to have been opposed by Greeks. According to Abydenus, a Greek fleet
guarded the Cilician shore, which the vessels of Sennacherib engaged and
defeated. Polyhistor seems to say that the Greeks also suffered a defeat
by land in Cilicia itself, after which Sennacherib took possession of
the country, and built Tarsus there on the model of Babylon. The
prominence here given to Greeks by Greek writers is undoubtedly
remarkable, and it throws a certain amount of suspicion over the whole
story. Still, as the Greek element in Cyprus was certainly important at
this time, and as the occupation of Cilicis, by the Assyrians may have
appeared to the Cyprian Greeks to endanger their independence, it is
conceivable that they lent some assistance to the natives of the
country, who were a hardy race, fond of freedom, and never very easily
brought into subjection. The admission af a double defeat makes it
evident that the tale is not the invention of Greek national vanity.
Abydenus and Polyhistor probably derive it from Berosus, who must also
have made the statement that Tarsus was now founded by Sennacherib, and
constructed, after the pattern of Babylon. The oc