the present volume. The
following is a list of the kings of Israel, after the
division of the tribes:--

[Illustration: 333.jpg TABLE OF KINGS OF ISRAEL]

[In this table father and son are shown by a perpendicular
line. The king's name in italics signifies that he died a
violent death.--Tr.]

Thus fell Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel, and with
Israel the last of the states which had aspired, with some prospect of
success, to rule over Syria. They had risen one after another during
the four centuries in which the absence of the stranger had left them
masters of their own fate--the Hittites in the North, the Hebrews and
the Philistines in the South, and the Aramaeans and Damascus in the
centre; each one of these races had enjoyed its years of glory and
ambition in the course of which it had seemed to prevail over its
rivals. Then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to
feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two
victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over
the whole country. The Hittite sphere of influence never at any time
extended much further southwards than the sources of the Orontes, while
that of the Hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the
vicinity of Hamath. And even progress thus far had cost both Hebrews and
Hittites a struggle so exhausting that they could not long maintain
it. No sooner did they relax their efforts, than those portions of
Coele-Syria which they had annexed to their original territory, being
too remote from the seat of power to feel its full attraction, gradually
detached themselves and resumed their independence, their temporary
suzerains being too much exhausted by the intensity of their own
exertions to retain hold over them. Damascus, which lay almost in
the centre, at an equal distance from the Euphrates and the "river of
Egypt," could have desired no better position for grouping the rest of
Syria round her.

[Illustration: 334.jpg SARGON OF ASSYRIA AND HIS VIZIER]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Flandin.

If any city had a chance of establishing a single kingdom, it was
Damascus, and Damascus alone. But lulled to blissful slumbers in her
shady gardens, she did not awake to political life and to the desire of
conquest until after all the rest, and at the very moment when Nineveh
was beginning to recover from her early reverses. Both Ben-hadads had