Tiglath-pileser III. was the founder of the Second Assyrian empire,
which was based on a wholly different principle from that of the first.
Occupation and not plunder was the object of its wars. The ancient
empire of Babylonia in western Asia was to be restored, and the commerce
of the Mediterranean to be diverted into Assyrian hands. The campaigns
of Tiglath-pileser and his successors were thus carried on in accordance
with a deliberate line of policy. They aimed at the conquest of the
whole civilised world, and the building up of a great organisation of
which Nineveh and its ruler were the head. It was a new principle and a
new idea. And measures were at once adopted to realise it.

The army was made an irresistible engine of attack. Its training,
discipline, and arms were such as the world had never seen before. And
the army was followed by a body of administrators. The conquered
population was transported elsewhere or else deprived of its leaders,
and Assyrian colonies and garrisons were planted in its place. The
administration was intrusted to a vast bureaucracy, at the head of which
stood the king. He appointed the satraps who governed the provinces, and
were responsible for the taxes and tribute, as well as for the
maintenance of order. The bureaucracy was partly military, partly civil,
the two elements acting as a check one upon the other.

But it was necessary that Ararat should be crushed before the plans of
the new monarch could be carried out. The strength of the army was first
tested in campaigns against Babylonia and the Medes, and then
Tiglath-pileser marched against the confederated forces of the Armenian
king. A league had been formed among the princes of northern Syria in
connection with that of the Armenians, but the Assyrian king annihilated
the army of Ararat in Comagênê, and then proceeded to besiege Arpad.