Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/107

 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 75 Amid this outward magnificence we discern the army as the The army center of the Emperor's power, and indeed of the state itself. The state is a vast military machine, more terrible than any such agency mankind had ever yet seen (Fig. 44). An important new fact aided in bringing about this result. The Assyrian forces First large were the first large armies to bear weapons of iron, replacing weapons the older armament of bronze, as borne for example by the ^firon armies of the Egyptian Empire (p. 53). A single arsenal room of Sargon's palace contained two hundred tons of iron imple- ments when uncovered by modern excavators. The bulk of the army was composed of archers, supported by heavy-armed spearmen and shield bearers (Fig. 44),' and the famous horsemen and chariotry of Nineveh (Fig. 45 and headpiece, p. 56). Besides their iron weapons the Assyrian soldiers possessed a Terrors of certain inborn ferocity which held all western Asia in abject army ^^^"^" terror before the thundering squadrons of the Ninevite.-^ The reigns of the Assyrian emperors were each one long war on all frontiers. Wherever their terrible armies swept through the land, they left a trail of ruin and desolation behind. Around smoking heaps which had once been towns, stretched lines of tall stakes on which were stuck the bodies of revolting rulers flayed alive ; while all around rose mounds and piles of the slaughtered, heaped up to celebrate the great king's power and serve as a warning to all revolters. Through clouds of dust arising along all the main roads of the Empire the men of the subject kingdoms behold great herds of cattle, horses, and asses, flocks of goats and sheep, and long lines of camels loaded with gold and silver, the wealth of the conquered, converging upon the palace at Nineveh. Before them march the chief men of the plundered kingdoms, with the bloody and severed heads of their former princes tied about their necks. Thus a vast and relentless system organized for plunder was absorbing the wealth of the East. While this plundered wealth was necessary for the support of the army it also served high purposes. We behold magnificent 1 See Nahum iii, 2-3.