He had covered himself with glory, and might well be proud of his achievement, yet the victory was in no way a decisive one. The damage inflicted on the allies, considerable though it was, had cost him dear: the forces left to him were not sufficient to enable him to finish the campaign, and extort oaths of allegiance from the Syrian princes before they had recovered from the first shock of defeat. He returned to Nineveh, and spent the whole winter in reorganising his troops; while his enemies, on the other hand, made preparations to repel the attack energetically. Sharduris could not yet venture outside his mountain strongholds, but the hope of being reinforced by him, as soon as he had got together another army, encouraged the Syrian kings to remain faithful to him in spite of his reverses.* * The part played by Sharduris in the events of the years which followed, passing mention of which was made by Winckler (_Gesch. Bab. und Ass_,, pp. 224, 225), have been fully dealt with by Belck and Lehmann (Chaldische _Forschungen, in Veriiand. der Berliner anthropol. Gesellschaft_, 1895, pp. 325-336). Matilu of Agusi, unable to carry the day against the Assyrians in the open field, distributed his men among his towns, and resisted all attacks with extraordinary persistence, confident that Sharduris would at length come to help him, and with this hope he held out for three years in his town of Arpad. This protracted resistance need no longer astonish us, now that we know, from observations made on the spot, the marvellous skill displayed in the fortification of these Asiatic towns. The ruins of Arpad have yet to be explored, but those of Samalla have been excavated, and show us the methods adopted for the defence of a royal residence about the middle of the century with which we are now concerned. The practice of building citadels on a square or rectangular plan, which prevailed so largely under the Egyptian rule, had gradually gone out of fashion as the knowledge of engineering advanced, and the use of mines and military engines had been more fully developed among the nations of Western Asia. It was found that the heavily fortified angles of the enclosing wall merely presented so many weak points, easy to attack but difficult to defend, no matter how carefully they might be protected by an accumulation of obstacles. In the case of fortresses built on a plain, where the plan was not modified by the nature of the site, the enclosing wall was generally round or oval in shape, and free from useless angles which might detract from its strength. The walls were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at short intervals by round or square towers, the tops of which rose but little, if indeed at all, above the level of the curtain. In front of this main wall was a second lower one, also furnished with towers and battlements, which followed the outline of the first all the way round at an interval of some yards,