illed by men whom the monarch associated with himself
in the never-ending work of conquest and repression. First of all came a
kind of grand vizier, the _Tartan_, or commander-in-chief of the royal
armies. This is the personage we so often find in the bas-reliefs facing
the king and standing in an attitude at once dignified and respectful (see
Fig. 22). Next came the great officers of the palace, the _ministers_ as we
should call them in modern parlance, and the governors of conquered
provinces. Eunuchs were charged with the supervision of the harem and, as
in the modern East, occupied high places at court. They may be recognized
in the bas-reliefs, where they are grouped about the king, by their round,
beardless faces (see Figs. 23 and 24). The _Kislar-Aga_ is, in the
Constantinople of to-day what more than one of these personages must have
been in Nineveh. Read the account given by Plutarch, on the authority of
Ctesias, of the murderous and perfidious intrigues that stained the palace
of Susa in the time of Artaxerxes-Mnemon. You will then have some idea of
the part, at once obscure and preponderant, that the more
intelligent among these miserable creatures were able to play in the
households of the great conquerors and unwearied hunters by whom the
palaces at Khorsabad, Kouyundjik, and Nimroud, were successively occupied.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--The King Sargon and his Grand Vizier. Bas-relief
from Khorsabad; in the Louvre. Alabaster. Height 116 inches. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--The suite of Sargon, _continued_. Bas-relief from
Khorsabad; in the Louvre. Alabaster. Height 90 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme
Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--The suite of Sargon, _continued_. Bas-relief from
Khorsabad. Alabaster. Height 97 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

All these military officers and administrators, these priests of the
different gods, and the domestics who were often the most powerful of all,
looked to the hand of the king himself and depended upon no other master.
Courage and military talent must have been the surest roads to advancement,
but sometimes, as under the Arab caliphs and the Ottoman sultans, the
caprice of the sovereign would lead him to raise a man from the lowest
ranks to the highest dignities of the state. The _regime_ of Assyria may be
described in the words applied to that of Russia, it was despotism tempered
with assassination. "And it came to pass, as he (Senn