peared in the flames.

Nineveh opened its gates to the besiegers, but this tardy submission did
not save the proud city. It was pillaged and burned, and then razed to
the ground so completely as to evidence the implacable hatred enkindled
in the minds of subject nations by the fierce and cruel Assyrian
government. The Medes and Babylonians did not leave one stone upon
another in the ramparts, palaces, temples, or houses of the city that
for two centuries had been dominant over all Western Asia.

So complete was the destruction that the excavations of modern explorers
on the site of Nineveh have not yet found one single wall slab earlier
than the capture of the city by Arbaces and Balazu. All we possess of
the first Nineveh is one broken statue. History has no other example of
so complete a destruction.

The Assyrian empire was, like the capital, overthrown, and the people
who had taken part in the revolt formed independent states--the Medes
under Arbaces, the Babylonians under Phul or Balazu, and the Susianians
under Shutruk-Nakhunta. Assyria, reduced to the enslaved state in which
she had so long held other countries, remained for some time a
dependency of Babylon.

This great event occurred in the year B.C. 789.

[When the noble sculptures and vast palaces of Nimrud had been first
uncovered, it was natural to suppose that they marked the real site of
ancient Nineveh; a passage of Strabo, and another of Ptolemy, lent
confirmation to this theory. Shortly afterward a rival claimant started
up in the region farther to the north.

"After a while an attempt was made to reconcile the rival claims by a
theory the grandeur of which gained it acceptance, despite its
improbability. It was suggested that the various ruins, which had
hitherto disputed the name, were in fact all included within the circuit
of the ancient Nineveh, which was described as a rectangle, or oblong
square, eighteen miles long and twelve broad. The remains at Khorsabad,
Koyunjik, Nimrud, and Keremles marked the four corners of this vast
quadrangle, which contained an area of two hundred and sixteen square
miles--about ten times that of London!

"In confirmation of this view was urged, first, the description in
Diodorus, derived probably from Ctesias, which corresponded (it was
said) both with the proportions and with the actual distances; and,
next, the statements contained in the Book of Jonah, which, it was
argued, implied a city of some such dim