common cause with any fresh enemy of Assyria. An
insurrection broke out in Bit-Zamani and the neighbouring districts.
Dayan-assur quelled it offhand; then, quitting the basin of the Tigris
by the defiles of Armash, he crossed the Arzania, and entered Urartu.
Sharduris came out to meet him, and was defeated, if we may give
credence to the official record of the campaign. Even if the account be
an authentic one, the victory was of no advantage to the Assyrians, for
they were obliged to retreat before they had subjugated the enemy, and
an insurrection among the Patina prevented them from returning to the
attack in the following year. With obligations to their foreign master
on one hand and to their own subjects on the other, the princes of the
Syrian states had no easy life. If they failed to fulfil their duties as
vassals, then an Assyrian invasion would pour in to their country, and
sooner or later their ruin would be assured; they would have before them
the prospect of death by impaling or under the knife of the flayer, or,
if they escaped this, captivity and exile in a far-off land. Prudence
therefore dictated a scrupulous fidelity to their suzerain. On the other
hand, if they resigned themselves to their dependent condition, the
people of their towns would chafe at the payment of tribute, or some
ambitious relative would take advantage of the popular discontent to
hatch a plot and foment a revolution, and the prince thus threatened
would escape from an Assyrian reprisal only to lose his throne or fall
by the blow of an assassin. In circumstances such as these the people of
the Patina murdered their king, Lubarna II., and proclaimed in his
room a certain Sum, who had no right to the crown, but who doubtless
undertook to liberate them from the foreigner. Dayan-assur defeated the
rebels and blockaded the remains of their army in Kinalua. They defended
themselves at first energetically, but on the death of Surri from some
illness, their courage failed them and they offered to deliver over the
sons of their chief if their own lives might be spared. Dayan-assur
had the poor wretches impaled, laid the inhabitants under a heavy
contribution, and appointed a certain Sasi, son of Uzza, to be their
king. The remainder of Syria gave no further trouble--a fortunate
circumstance, for the countries on the Armenian border revolted in 832
B.C., and the whole year was occupied in establishing order among
the herdsmen of Kirkhi. In 831 B.