Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/62

56 time immediately after Tiklat-Adar I., who reigned about 1300 and brought the whole of Babylonia under Assyrian power; but Herodotus could not have meant this period, for in 1210 we see Assyria and Babylon again in violent contest.

It was Tiglath-Pileser I. (1120–1100 B. C.) who led the Assyrian hosts everywhere victorious, and achieved magnificent results. This king could boast that he had brought under his power forty-two lands in the region extending from the districts beyond the lower Zab on the east and northeast to the land of the Ḫatti (Hittites) and to the "upper sea" on the west.

If we reckon forward five hundred and twenty years from 1120, we come to the year 600, the time of the great catastrophe which shattered the Assyrian power (606). It might seem, then, that the interval between Tiglath-Pileser I. and the Fall of Nineveh (1126–606=520 years) must be the epoch of Assyrian rule over Asia which Herodotus mentions. But, according to our historian, the end of Assyrian supremacy in Western Asia is not coincident with the fall of Nineveh; rather there follows upon the revolt of the Medes and other nations the subjugation of the newly liberated tribes by the Median Phraortes. But Nineveh fell, as Herodotus rightly states, in the time of Cyaxares, the successor of Phraortes. Therefore the series of events, according to I., 95–106, is as follows: (i) The revolt of the Medes from the Assyrian empire; (2) the revolt of the other conquered nations (end of the Assyrian power in Western Asia); (3) subjugation by the Median king, Phraortes, of the Persians and the other tribes which had revolted from Assyria; (4) siege of Nineveh by Cyaxares (