check his own repressive measures; he destroyed towns, massacred entire
tribes, and laid whole tracts of country waste, and by failing to
repeople these with captive exiles from other nations, or to import
colonists in sufficient numbers, he found himself towards the end of
his reign ruling over a sparsely inhabited desert where his father had
bequeathed to him flourishing provinces and populous cities. His was
the system of the first Assyrian conquerors, Shalmaneser III. and
Assur-nazir-pal, substituted for that of Tiglath-pileser III. and
Sargon. The assimilation of the conquered peoples to their conquerors
was retarded, tribute was no longer paid regularly, and the loss of
revenue under this head was not compensated by the uncertain increase
in the spoils obtained by war; the recruiting of the army, rendered more
difficult by the depopulation of revolted districts, weighed heavier
still on those which remained faithful, and began, as in former times,
to exhaust the nation. The news of Sargon's murder, published throughout
the Eastern world, had rekindled hope in the countries recently
subjugated by Assyria, as well as in those hostile to her. Phoenicia,
Egypt, Media, and Elam roused themselves from their lethargy and
anxiously awaited the turn which events should take at Nineveh and
Babylon. Sennacherib did not consider it to his interest to assume the
crown of Chaldæa, and to treat on a footing of absolute equality a
country which had been subdued by force of arms: he relegated it to the
rank of a vassal state, and while reserving the suzerainty for himself,
sent thither one of his brothers to rule as king.*

* The events which took place at Babylon at the beginning of
Sennacherib's reign are known to us from the fragments of
Berosus, compared with the Canon of Ptolemy and Pinches'
Babylonian Canon. The first interregnum in the Canon of
Ptolemy (704-702 B.C.) is filled in Pinches' Canon by three