Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/78

72 Syria, except Babylon and its vicinity. Herodotus promises to give us a further account in his Assyrian history. The other Greek writers bring contradictory reports. According to Berossus, Astyages was that Median king who conquered Nineveh with the aid of the Babylonians. According to Abydenos, the Babylonian king Busalossaros (Nabopolassar) marched alone against Nineveh. Alexander Polyhistor calls the last Assyrian king Sarakos (Sin-šar-iškun). Ctesias calls him Sardanapalos (Ashurbanipal). The Median king who participated in the conquest of Nineveh is called by Ctesias Arbaces, the Babylonian Belesys. (Diodorus, II., 24 fg.). Herodotus states that Phraortes attacked the Assyrians, which attack falls in the first year after the death of Ashurbanipal— i. e., 625 B. C. Phraortes was slain in this battle (624). The statement of some Greek writers that Sardanapalos (Ashurbanipal) lived to see the fall of Nineveh (606 B. C.), and then threw himself into the flames of the burning palace, is untrue. Ashurbanipal was not the last, but the last prominent king of the Assyrians. The weakness which seems to have characterized his successors would be imputed by later writers to Ashurbanipal himself.

Herodotus further states that Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes, in order to avenge his father, made a new expedition against Assyria, and besieged Nineveh. The inroad of the Scythians forced him to raise the siege. All this is neither affirmed nor denied by the cuneiform inscriptions, but it seems probable when we remember the confusion in the Assyrian empire.

According to Herodotus the Scythians ruled in Western Asia twenty-eight years. After Cyaxares had