mental aberration which has often proved the penalty of despotism, but in
the strange and degrading form to which physicians have given the name of
lycanthropy; in which the patient, fancying himself a beast, rejects
clothing and ordinary food, and even (as in this case) the shelter of a
roof, ceases to use articulate speech, and sometimes persists in going on
all-fours."--Smith's _Ancient History of the East_, p. 357.] After a
period the cloud passed away, "the glory of his kingdom, his honor, and
brightness returned unto him." But it was the splendor of the evening; for
the old monarch soon after died at the age of eighty, worn out by the
toils and cares of a reign of forty-three years, the longest, most
memorable, and instructive in the annals of the Babylonian or Assyrian
kings.

THE FALL OF BABYLON.--In 555 B.C., Nabonadius, the last king of Babylon,
began his reign. He seems to have associated with himself in the
government his son Belshazzar, who shared with his father the duties and
honors of royalty, apparently on terms of equal co-sovereignty.

To the east of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, beyond the
ranges of the Zagros, there had been growing up an Aryan kingdom, the
Medo-Persian, which, at the time now reached by us, had excited by its
aggressive spirit the alarm of all the nations of Western Asia. For
purposes of mutual defence, the king of Babylon, and Croesus, the well-
known monarch of Lydia, a state of Asia Minor, formed an alliance against
Cyrus, the strong and ambitious sovereign of the Medes and Persians. This
league awakened the resentment of Cyrus, and, after punishing Croesus and
depriving him of his kingdom (see p. 75), he collected his forces to
chastise the Babylonian king.

Anticipating the attack, Nabonadius had strengthened the defences of