[Illustration: SIEGE OF A CITY, SHOWING USE OF BATTERING-RAM. (From
Nimrud.)]

ASSHUR-BANI-PAL (668-626? B.C.).--This king, the Sardanapalus of the
Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art and
literature. During his reign Assyria enjoyed her Augustan age.

But Asshur-bani-pal was also possessed of a warlike spirit. He broke to
pieces, with terrible energy, in swift campaigns, the enemies of his
empire. All the scenes of his sieges and battles he caused to be
sculptured on the walls of his palace at Nineveh. These pictured panels
are now in the British Museum. They are a perfect Iliad in stone.

SARACUS OR ESARHADDON II. (?-606 B.C.).--Saracus was the last of the long
line of Assyrian kings. His reign was filled with misfortunes for himself
and his kingdom. For nearly or quite seven centuries the Ninevite kings
had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western
Asia that had not, during this time, felt the weight of their conquering
arms; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments, or
tasted the bitterness of their servitude.

But now swift misfortunes were bearing down upon the oppressor from every
quarter. The Scythian hordes, breaking through the mountain gates on the
north, spread a new terror throughout the upper Assyrian provinces; from
the mountain defiles on the east issued the armies of the recent-grown
empire of the Aryan Medes, led by the renowned Cyaxares; from the southern
lowlands, anxious to aid in the overthrow of the hated oppressor, the
Babylonians, led by the youthful Nebuchadnezzar, the son of the traitor
viceroy Nabopolassar, joined, it appears, the Medes as allies, and