where it is stated that Samaria was destroyed in the
sixth year of Hezekiah. I consider, in agreement with
several historians, that the date of Sennacherib's invasion
of Judah must have remained more firmly fixed in the minds
of the Jewish historians than that of the taking of Samaria,
and as 2 Kings xviii. 13 places this invasion in the
fourteenth year of Hezekiah, which corresponds, as we shall
see, to the third year of Sennacherib, or 702 B.C., it seems
better to place the accession of Hezekiah about 715, and
prolong the reign of Ahaz till after the campaign of Sargon
against Hannon of Gaza.

The whole country from the Orontes to the mountains of Seir and the
river of Egypt was again reduced to obedience, and set itself by
peaceful labours to repair the misfortunes which had befallen it during
the previous quarter of a century. Sargon returned to his capital, but
fate did not yet allow him to renew his projects against Babylon.
Barely did an insurrection break out in any part of the country on the
accession of a new king at Nineveh without awaking echoes in the distant
provinces of the empire. The report of a revolt in Chaldaea roused a
slumbering dissatisfaction among the Syrians, and finally led them into
open rebellion: the episodes of the Syrian campaign, narrated in
Armenia or on the slopes of the Taurus with the thousand embellishments
suggested by the rancour of the narrators, excited the minds of the
inhabitants and soon rendered an outbreak inevitable. The danger would
have been serious if the suppressed hatred of all had found vent at the
same moment, and if insurrections in five or six different parts of his
empire had to be faced by the sovereign simultaneously; but as a
rule these local wars broke out without any concentrated plan, and
in localities too remote from each other to permit of any possible
co-operation between the assailants; each chief, before attempting to
assert his independence, seemed to wait until the Assyrians had had
ample time to crush the rebel who first took the field, having done
which they could turn the whole of their forces against the latest
foe. Thus Iaubidi did not risk a campaign till the fall of Elam and
Karduniash had been already decided on the field of Durilu; in the same
way, the nations of the North and East refrained from entering the lists
till they had allowed Sargon time to destroy the league of Hamath and
repel t