dded a passionate addiction to
the pleasure of the chase. Lion-hunting was his especial delight.
Sometimes along the banks of reedy streams, sometimes borne mid-channel
in his pleasure galley, he sought the king of beasts in his native
haunts, roused him by means of hounds and beaters from his lair, and
despatched him with his unerring arrows. Sometimes he enjoyed the sport
in his own park of paradise. Large and fierce beasts, brought from a
distance, were placed in traps about the grounds, and on his approach
were set free from their confinement, while he drove among them in his
chariot, letting fly his shafts at each with a strong and steady hand,
which rarely failed to attain the mark it aimed at. Aided only by two or
three attendants armed with spears, he would encounter the terrific
spring of the bolder beasts, who rushed frantically at the royal
marksman and endeavored to tear him from the chariot-board. Sometimes he
would even voluntarily quit this vantage-ground, and, engaging with the
brutes on the same level, without the protection of armor, in his
everyday dress, with a mere fillet upon his head, he would dare a close
combat, and smite them with sword or spear through the heart.

When the supply of lions fell short, or when he was satiated with this
kind of sport. Asshur-bani-pal would vary his occupation, and content
himself with game of an inferior description. Wild bulls were probably
no longer found in Assyria or the adjacent countries, so that he was
precluded from the sport which, next to the chase of the lion occupied
and delighted the earlier monarchs. He could indulge, however, freely in
the chase of the wild ass still to this day a habitant of the
Mesopotamian region; and he would hunt the stag, the hind, and the ibex
or wild goat. In these tamer kinds of sport he seems, however, to have
indulged only occasionally--as a light relaxation scarcely worthy of a
great king.

Asshur-bani-pal is the only one of the Assyrian monarchs to whom we can
ascribe a real taste for learning and literature. The other kings were
content to leave behind them some records of the events of their reigns,
inscribed on cylinders, slabs, bulls, or lions, and a few dedicatory
inscriptions, addresses to the gods whom they especially worshipped.
Asshur-bani-pal's literary tastes were far more varied--indeed they were
all-embracing. It seems to have been under his direction that the vast
collection of clay tablets--a sort of Ro