Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/242

 220 HISTORY OF GREECE. Babylon, beginning with what is called the era of Nabonassar. or 747 B. c., does not prove at what epoch these Babylonian We know both from Scripture and from the Phoenician annals, as cited by Josephus that the Assyrians of Nineveh were powerful conquerors in Syria, Judtea, and Phoenicia, during the reigns of Salmaneser and Sennach- erib : the statement of Josephus farther implies that Media was subject to Salmaneser, -who took the Israelites from their country into Media and Persis, and brought the Cuthaeans out of Media and Persis into the lands of the Israelites (Joseph, ix, 14, 1 ; x, 9, 7). We know farther, that after Sen nacherib, the Assyrians of Nineven are no more mentioned as invaders or disturbers of Syria or Judaea ; the Chaldoeans or Babylonians become then the enemies whom those countries have to dread Josephus tells us, that at this epoch the Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Medes, or, as he says in another place, by the Mcdcs and Babylonians (x, 2, 2; x, 5, 1). This is good evidence for believing that the Assyrian empire of Nineveh sustained at this time a great shock and diminution of power ; but as to the nature of this diminution, and the way in which it was brought about, it ap- pears to me that there is a discrepancy of authorities which we have no means of reconciling, Josephus follows the same view as Ktesias, of the destruc- tion of the empire of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians united, while Herodotus conceives successive revolts of the territories dependent upon Nineveh, beginning with that of the Medes, and still leaving Nineveh flourishing and powerful in its own territory : he farther conceives Nineveh as taken by Kyaxares the Mede, about the year 600 B. c., without any men- tion of Babylonians, on the contrary, in his representation, Nitokris the queen of Babylon is afraid of the Medes (i, 185), partly from the general increase of their power, but especially from their having taken Nineveh (though Mr. Clinton tells us, p. 275, that "Nineveh was destroyed B. c. 606, as we have seen from the united testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, by the Medes and Babylonians") Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he conceived the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800 and 560 B. c. differently on many material points from Ktesias, or Berosus, or Josephus : and he himself expressly tells us, that he heard " four different tales" even respecting Cyrus (i, 95) ; much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than a century. The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. c., acquires some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within certain limits ; but above the year 700 B. c. no such fixed points can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the mythical in our authorities, we cannot reconcile them with each other, except by violent changes and conjectures, nor can we determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from Nabonassar, in the O.non of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic, but they are names and date*