How execrated was the name of Assyria throughout the length and the breadth of western Asia, and how the peoples whom she had so long plundered and enslaved rejoiced when they heard of the downfall of her capital is made clear by the prophet Nahum when he declares: All who have heard of the fame of thee [thy destruction] have clapped their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually.[355] But the Prophet Zephaniah, who was a contemporary of the stupendous event, gives an even more graphic account of the utter desolation which followed the overthrow of the far-famed metropolis: And the Lord of hosts ... will stretch out His hands upon the north and will destroy Assyria and He will make the beautiful city [Nineveh] a wilderness and as a place not passable and as a desert. And flocks shall lie down in the midst thereof, all the beasts of the nations; and the bittern and the urchin shall lodge in the threshold thereof; the voice of the singing bird in the window, the raven on the upper post, for I will consume her strength. This is the glorious city that dwelt in security; that said in her heart: I am, and there is none beside me; how is she become a desert, a place for beasts to lie down in? Everyone that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand.[356] How completely these dire words of the Hebrew prophet were verified is evidenced by the fact that when Xenophon and his Ten Thousand Greeks two centuries later passed by the mounds which covered the remains of Nineveh’s one-time magnificence, they were quite unaware of being in the immediate vicinity of the sumptuous palaces and temples of the erstwhile Queen City of the Tigris.[357] Lucian, the Greek Voltaire, who was born at Samosata on the Euphrates in the second century after Christ, tells us in one of his satirical dialogues that all trace of Nineveh had disappeared. Representing Charon as on a leave of absence from the infernal regions, where he officiated as ferryman of the dead, and as starting with Hermes, the swift-footed messenger of the gods, who acts as his guide, on a short tour of this upper world, he gives us these two characteristic paragraphs: CHARON.--Show me the famous cities of which we hear so much down below: The Nineveh of Sardanapalus and Babylon and Mycenæ and Cleonæ and especially Troy. I remember to have ferried over the Styx so many times from this last place that I could not haul my boat upon the bank, or have it thoroughly dried for ten whole years. HERMES.--Nineveh, O Ferryman, perished long ago and there is no trace of her remaining; nor would you be able to tell where she stood. Babylon is yonder city with the fair towers and the immense circuit of wall, but will soon have to be sought for like Nineveh.[358]