Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/111

 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 79 defend it. As reports of new revolts come in the harassed ruler Foreign at Nineveh commands the enforced service of militia from among the army the subjects of the foreign vassal kingdoms. To a larger and larger degree the imperial army thus becomes a medley of for- eigners. With an army made up of foreigners to a dangerous extent, with no industries, with fields lying idle, and with the commerce of the country in the hands of the Aramean traders (p. 71), the Assyrian state fast loses its inner strength. In addition to such weakness within, there were the most Fall of threatening dangers from without. These came, as of old, from assauVts'from both sides of the fertile crescent. Drifting in from the desert, as without we have seen, the Aramean hordes were constantly absorbing the territory of the Empire. Sennacherib in one campaign took over two hundred thousand captives out of Babylonia, mostly Arameans. At the same time another desert tribe called the " Kaldi," whom we know as the Chaldeans, had been for cen- Chaldeans turies creeping slowly around the head of the Persian Gulf and settling along its shores at the foot of the eastern mountains. On the other hand, in the northern mountains the advancing Indo- hordes of Indo-European peoples are in full view (see pp. 86 ff.). peoples : Their eastern wing, which has moved down the east side of ^ndSy'thi^ns the Caspian, fills the northeastern mountains, especially south of the Caspian ; its leaders are the tribes of the Medes and Per- Medes and sians (see p. 92). These movements shake the Assyrian state to its foundations. The Chaldeans master Babylonia, and when in combination with the Median hosts from the northeastern mountains they assail the walls of Nineveh, the mighty city falls. Destruction ... ^ of Nineveh In the voice of the Hebrew prophet Nahum^ we hear an echo ot the exulting shout which resounds from the Caspian to the Nile as the nations discover that the terrible scourge of the East has at last been laid low. Its fall was forever, and when two centuries later Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks marched past the place (p. 2 1 1) the Assyrian nation was but a vague tradition, and Nineveh, its great city, was a vast heap of rubbish as it is to-day. 1 Especially ii, 8-13, and iii entire.