. 626 he died, after a reign of forty-two
years, and was succeeded by his son, Asshur-emid-ilin, whom the Greeks
called Saracus. Of this prince we possess but few native records; and,
unless it should be thought that the picture which Ctesias gave of the
character and conduct of his last Assyrian king deserves to be regarded
as authentic history, and to be attached to this monarch, we must
confess to an almost equal dearth of classical notices of his life and
actions. Scarcely anything has come down to us from his time but a few
legends on bricks, from which it appears that he was the builder of the
south-east edifice at Nimrud, a construction presenting some remarkable
but no very interesting features. The classical notices, apart from the
tales which Ctesias originated, are limited to a few sentences in
Abydenus, and a word or two in Polyhistor. Thus nearly the same
obscurity which enfolds the earlier portion of the history gathers about
the monarch in whose person the empire terminated; and instead of the
ample details which have crowded upon us now for many consecutive
reigns, we shall be reduced to a meagre outline, partly resting upon
conjecture, in our portraiture of this last king.

Saracus, as the monarch may be termed after Abydenus, ascended the
throne at a most difficult and dangerous crisis in his country's
history. Assyria was exhausted; and perhaps half depopulated by the
Scythic ravages. The bands which united the provinces to the sovereign
state, though not broken, had been weakened, and rebellion threatened to
break out in various quarters. Ruin had overtaken many of the provincial
towns; and it would require a vast outlay to restore their public
buildings. But the treasury was wellnigh empty, and did not allow the
new monarch to adopt in his buildings the grand and magnificent style of
former kings. Still Saracus attempted something. At Calah he began the
construction of a building which apparently was intended for a palace,
but which contrasts most painfully with the palatial erections of former
kings. The waning glory of the monarchy was made patent both to the
nation and to strangers by an edifice where coarse slabs of common
limestone, unsculptured and uninscribed, replaced the alabaster
bas-reliefs of former times; and where a simple plaster above the slabs
was the substitute for the richly-patterned enamelled bricks of Sargon,
Sennacherib, and Asshur-bani-pal. A set of small chambers, of which no