acherib) was
worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer
his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of
Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead."[123] Sennacherib's
father, Sargon, perished in the same fashion.

These murders were, perhaps, the revenge for some outrage or punishment
imprudently inflicted in a moment of anger; but however that may have been,
neither in the one case nor the other did they hinder the legitimate heir
from succeeding his father. Sennacherib replaced Sargon, and Esarhaddon
Sennacherib. The Assyrian supremacy was only supported by the constant
presence, at the head of the army, of a king ready for every eventuality; a
few weeks of anarchy or interregnum would have thrown the whole empire into
confusion; the royal power was the keystone of the arch, the element upon
which depended the stability of a colossal edifice subjected to various
strains. In such a society, art could hardly have had a mission other than
the glorification of a power without limit and without control--a power to
which alone the Assyrians had to look for a continuance of their dearly-won
supremacy. The architect, the sculptor, and the painter, exhausted the
resources of their arts, the one in building a palace for the prince on a
high mound raised to dominate the surrounding plain, the others in
decorating it when built and multiplying the images of its almost divine
inhabitant. The exploits of the sovereign, his great and never-ending
achievements as a conqueror and destroyer of monsters, as pontif of Assur
and the founder of palaces and cities--such are the themes to which
Assyrian sculpture devoted itself for many centuries, taking them up and
varying them in countless ways, and that, apparently, without any fear that
he for whom the whole work was intended would ever grow weary of the
repetition.

Such themes presuppose the actual occurrence of the events represented and
the artists' realization either from personal observation or from
descriptions. This gives rise to a very sensible difference between
Chaldaean sculpture and that of Assyria, so far at least as the latter is to
be studied in the decorations of a palace. In those characteristics and
qualities of execution which permit of a definition, the style is no doubt
the same as in Chaldaea. The artists of Babylon and those of Nineveh were
pupils in one school--they saw nature with the same eyes; the