Freed from her Assyrian oppressors, Babylon now renewed her youth, and the city attained a material splendour and magnificence such as she had not achieved during the long course of her earlier history. But it took her more than a generation to realize to the full her newly awakened ambitions. After his declaration of independence, Nabopolassar's influence did not extend far beyond the walls of Babylon and Borsippa. The other great cities, both in the north and south, continued for a time to acknowledge Assyrian supremacy. But the sons of Ashur-bani-pal, who succeeded him upon the throne, had inherited a reduced empire, whose sole support, the Assyrian army, was now largely composed of disheartened mercenaries. In Ashur-bani-pal's reign there had been signs of coming change and of the appearance of new races before whom the Assyrians were doomed to disappear. The destruction of Urartu had removed a vital barrier against the incursion of the nomad tribes, and with its disappearance we find new racial elements pressing into Western Asia, of the same Indo-European family as that of the Medes and their Iranian kinsfolk. These were the Scythians, who in the middle of the seventh century had driven the Cimmerians before them into Asia Minor, and it was they who a generation later struck the death-blow of the Assyrian empire, pouring across it in resistless hordes. Assyria had no force in reserve with which to oppose their progress or repair their ravages. For centuries this great military power had struck terror throughout Western Asia; but insatiable lust for dominion now met with its due reward. Since Sennacherib's day the ranks of the army had been filled with levies drawn from her subject peoples or with mercenary troops, and these were a poor substitute for the race of hardy fighters who had been sacrificed in their country's countless wars. So when the Medes invested Nineveh, with the possible assistance of the Scythians, and the passive encouragement of Babylon, the capital could look for no assistance from her provinces. According to Herodotus[1] the Medes had already twice invaded Assyria before the final investment; and it was natural that Nabopolassar should have regarded them as his allies, and have concluded a definite alliance with them by marrying his son Nebuchadnezzar to the daughter of Cyaxares, the Median king.[2] Sennacherib's mighty walls kept the enemy at bay for three years, but in 606 B.C. the city was taken by storm, and later ages preserved the tradition that Sin-shar-ishkun, the Sarakos of the Greeks, perished in the flames of his palace, rather than fall alive into the besiegers' hands.