back across the Nairi lands and penned into their central fastnesses of
Van; by the ease, too, with which Babylonia was humbled and occupied
again, and the Phoenician ports and the city of Damascus, impregnable
theretofore, were taken and held to tribute--she began to dream of world
empire, the first society in history to conceive this unattainable
ideal. Certain influences and events, however, would defer awhile any
attempt to realize the dream. Changes of dynasty took place, thanks
partly to reactionary forces at home and more to the praetorian basis on
which the kingdom now reposed, and only one of his house succeeded
Tiglath Pileser. But the set-back was of brief duration. In the year 722
another victorious general thrust himself on to the throne and, under
the famous name of Sargon, set forth to extend the bounds of the empire
towards Media on the east, and over Cilicia into Tabal on the west,
until he came into collision with King Mita of the Mushki and held him
to tribute.


SECTION 2. THE EMPIRE OF SARGON

Though at least one large province had still to be added to the Assyrian
Empire, Sargon's reign may be considered the period of its greatest
strength. He handed on to Sennacherib no conquests which could not have
been made good, and the widest extent of territory which the central
power was adequate to hold. We may pause, then, just before Sargon's
death in 705, to see what the area of that territory actually was.

Its boundaries cannot be stated, of course, with any approach to the
precision of a modern political geographer. Occupied territories faded
imperceptibly into spheres of influence and these again into lands
habitually, or even only occasionally, raided. In some quarters,