one exceeded forty-five feet in length and twenty-five feet in its
greatest breadth, sufficed for the last Assyrian king, whose shrunken
Court could no longer have filled the vast halls of his ancestors. The
Nimrud palace of Saracus seems to have covered less than one-half of the
space occupied by any former palace upon the mound; it had no grand
facade, no magnificent gateway; the rooms, curiously misshapen, as if
taste had declined with power and wealth, were mostly small and
inconvenient, running in suites which opened into one another without
any approaches from courts or passages, roughly paved with limestone
flags, and composed of sun-dried bricks faced with limestone and
plaster. That Saracus should have been reduced even to contemplate
residing in this poor and mean dwelling is the strongest possible proof
of Assyria's decline and decay at a period preceding the great war which
led to her destruction.

It is possible that this edifice may not have been completed at the time
of Saracus's death, and in that case we may suppose that its extreme
rudeness would have received certain embellishments had he lived to
finish the structure. While it was being erected, he must have resided
elsewhere. Apparently, he held his court at Nineveh during this period;
and was certainly there that he made his last arrangements for defence,
and his final stand against the enemy, who took advantage of his weak
condition to press forward the conquest of the empire.

The Medes, in their strong upland country, abounding in rocky hills, and
running up in places into mountain-chains, had probably suffered much
less from the ravages of the Scyths than the Assyrians in their
comparatively defenceless plains. Of all the nations exposed to the
scourge of the invasion they were evidently the first to recover
themselves, partly from the local causes here noticed, partly perhaps
from their inherent vigor and strength. If Herodotus's date for the
original inroad of the Scythians is correct, not many years can have
elapsed before the tide of war turned, and the Medes began to make head
against their assailants, recovering possession of most parts of their
country, and expelling or overpowering the hordes at whose insolent
domination they had chafed from the first hour of the invasion. It was
probably as early as B.C. 627, five years after the Scyths crossed the
Caucasus, according to Herodotus, that Cyaxares, having sufficiently
re-established h