laces up to the last moment. Each reign
added to the series of royal dwellings in which every chamber was filled
with inscriptions and living figures. Some of these structures were raised
in Nineveh itself, some in the neighbouring cities. At the south-east angle
of the mound at Nimroud, the remains of a palace begun by Assuredilani have
been excavated. Its construction had been interrupted by the Medes and
Scythians, for it was left unfinished. Its proposed area was very small.
The rooms were narrow and ill arranged, and their walls were decorated at
foot with slabs of bare limestone instead of sculptured alabaster. Above
the plinth thus formed they were covered with roughly executed paintings
upon plaster, instead of with enamelled bricks. Both plan and decoration
show evidence of haste and disquiet. The act of sovereignty had to be done,
but all certainty of the morrow had vanished. From the moment in which
Assyrian sculpture touched its highest point in the reign of Assurbanipal,
the material resources of the kingdom and the supply of skilled workmen had
slowly but constantly diminished.[79]

Nineveh destroyed, the empire of which it was the capital vanished with it.
The new Babylonian empire, the Empires of the Medes and of the Persians
followed each other with such rapidity that the Assyrian heroes and their
prowess might well have been forgotten. The feeble recollections they left
in men's minds became tinged with the colours of romance. The Greeks took
pleasure in the fable of Sardanapalus: they developed it into a moral tale
with elaborate conceits and telling contrasts, but they did not invent it
from the foundation. The first hint of it must have been given by legends
of the fall and destruction of Nineveh current in the cities of Ecbatana,
Susa, and Babylon when Ctesias was within their walls.

* * * * *

After the obliteration of Nineveh the Medes and Chaldaeans divided western
Asia between them. A family alliance was concluded between Nabopolassar and
Cyaxares at the moment of concerting the attack which was to have such a
brilliant success, and either in consequence of that alliance or for some
unknown motive, the two nations remained good friends after their common
victory. The Medes kept Assyria, and extended themselves to the north, over
the whole country between the Caspian and the Black Sea. They would have
carried their frontiers to the AEgaean but for the existence of