n discovered in the mound of Nebbi-Younas.

Never had the empire seemed more strong and flourishing than now, and yet
it was close to its fall. The Sargonids understood fighting and pillage,
but they made no continuous effort to unite the various peoples whom they
successfully conquered and trampled underfoot. The Assyrians have been
compared to the Romans, and in some respects the parallel is good. They
showed a Roman energy in the conduct of their incessant struggles, and the
soldiers who brought victory so often to the standards of the Sennacheribs
and Shalmanesers must have been in their time, as the legions of the
consuls and dictators were in later years, the best troops in Asia: they
were better armed, better disciplined, and better led than those of
neighbouring states, more used to fatigue, to long marches and rapid
evolutions. The brilliance of their success and its long duration are thus
explained, for the chiefs of the empire never seem to have had the faintest
suspicion of the adroit policy which was afterwards to bind so many
conquered peoples to the Roman sceptre. The first necessity for civilized
man is security: the hope, or rather the certainty, of enjoying the fruits
of his own industry in peace. When this certainty is assured to him he
quickly pardons and forgets the injuries he has suffered. This fact has
been continually ignored by Oriental conquerors and by Assyrian conquerors
more than any others. The Egyptians and Persians appear now and then to
have succeeded in reconciling their subject races, and in softening their
mutual hatreds by paying some attention to their political wants. But the
Assyrians reckoned entirely upon terror. And yet one generation was often
enough to obliterate the memory of the most cruel disasters. Sons did not
learn from the experience of their fathers, and, although dispersed and
decimated times without number, the enemies of Assyria never acquiesced in
defeat. In the subjection imposed upon them they panted for revenge, and
while paying their tributes they counted the hours and followed with
watchful eye every movement of their master. Let him be carried into any
distant province, or engaged in lengthened hostilities, and they at once
flew to their arms. If the prince were fighting in Armenia, or on the
borders of the Caspian, Chaldaea and Susiana would rise against him: if
disputing the Nile Valley with the Ethiopians, Syria would revolt in his
rear and the insurrectio