cythic incursion may have, really benefited, rather than
injured, Media, by weakening the great power to whose empire she
aspired to succeed. The exhaustion of Assyria's resources at the time is
remarkably illustrated by the poverty and meanness of the palace which
the last king, Saracus, built for himself at Calah. She lay, apparently,
at the mercy of the first bold assailant, her prestige lost, her army
dispirited or disorganized, her defences injured, her high spirit broken
and subdued.

Cyaxaros, ere proceeding to the attack, sent, it is probable, to make
an alliance with the Susianians and Chaldaeans. Susiana was the last
country which Assyria had conquered, and could remember the pleasures of
independence. Chaldaea, though it had been now for above half a century
an Assyrian fief, and had borne the yoke with scarcely a murmur during
that period, could never wholly forget its old glories, or the long
resistance which it had made before submitting to its northern neighbor.
The overtures of the Median monarch seem to have been favorably
received; and it was agreed that an army from the south should march up
the Tigris and threaten Assyria from that quarter, while Cyaxares
led his Medes from the east, through the passes of Zagros against the
capital. Rumor soon conveyed the tidings of his enemies' intentions to
the Assyrian monarch, who immediately made such a disposition of the
forces at his command as seemed best calculated to meet the double
danger which threatened him. Selecting from among his generals the
one in whom he placed most confidence--a man named Nabopolassar, most
probably an Assyrian--he put him at the head of a portion of his troops,
and sent him to Babylon to resist the enemy who was advancing from the
sea. The command of his main army he reserved for himself, intending to
undertake in person the defence of his territory against the Medes. This
plan of campaign was not badly conceived; but it was frustrated by an
unexpected calamity, Nabopolassar, seeing his sovereign's danger, and
calculating astutely that he might gain more by an opportune defection
from a falling cause than he could look to receive as the reward of
fidelity, resolved to turn traitor and join the enemies of Assyria.
Accordingly he sent an embassy to Cyaxares, with proposals for a close
alliance to be cemented by a marriage. If the Median monarch would
give his daughter Amuhia (or Amyitis) to be the wife of his son
Nebuchadnezzar, t