dy, would seek assistance against these barbarians from
the sovereign whose interests appeared identical with his own. The
renown of the Assyrian empire had penetrated far into the west; the
Achaens of Cyprus who were its subjects, the Greek colonists of Cilicia,
and the soldiers whom the exigencies of the coast-trade brought to
Syrian ports, must all have testified to its splendour; and the fame
of its conquests over the Tabal and the peoples on the Halys had spread
abroad more than once during the previous century, and had reached as
far as the western extremity of the peninsula of Asia Minor, by means of
the merchants of Sardes or Ionia. The Cimmerians had harassed Assyria,
and still continued to be a source of anxiety to her rulers; Gyges
judged that participation in a common hatred or danger would predispose
the king in his favour, and a dream furnished him with a pretext for
notifying to the court of Nineveh his desire to enter into friendly
relations with it. He dreamed that a god, undoubtedly Assur, had
appeared to him in the night, and commanded him to prostrate himself
at the feet of Assur-bani-pal: "In his name thou shalt overcome thine
enemies." The next morning he despatched horsemen to the great king,
but when the leader of the embassy reached the frontier and met the
Assyrians for the first time, they asked him, "Who, then, art thou,
brother, thou from whose land no courier has as yet visited our
country?" The language he spoke was unknown to them; they only gathered
that he desired to be conducted into the presence of the king, and
consequently sent him on to Nineveh under good escort. There the same
obstacle presented itself, for none of the official interpreters at
the court knew the Lydian tongue; however, an interpreter was at length
discovered, who translated the story of the dream as best he could.
Assur-bani-pal joyfully accepted the homage offered to him from such
a far-off land, and from thenceforward some sort of alliance existed
between Assyria and Lydia--an alliance of a very Platonic order, from
which Gyges at least derived no sensible advantage. Some troops
sent into the country of the White Syrians may have disquieted the
Cimmerians, and, by causing a diversion in their rear, procured a
respite for Lydia; but the caravan route across Asia Minor was only
of secondary importance to the prosperity of Nineveh and the Syrian
provinces, since the Phoenician navy provided sufficient outlets for
th