No kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of Assyria in the days succeeding its triumphs over Blam and Arabia: precisely at this point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors a little breathing-space. Half a century rolls by, during which we have a dim perception of the subdued crash of falling empires, and of the trampling of armies in fierce fight; then the curtain rises on an utterly different drama, of which the plot has been woven behind the scenes, and the exciting _motif_ has just come into play. We no longer hear of Assyria and its kings; their palaces are in ruins; their last faithful warriors sleep in unhonoured graves beneath the ashes of their cities, their prowess is credited to the account of half a dozen fabulous heroes such as Ninus, Sardanapalus, and Semiramis--heroes whose names call up in the memory of succeeding generations only vague but terrible images, such as the phantasies of a dream, which, although but dimly remembered in the morning, makes the hair to stand on end with terror. The nations which erewhile disputed the supremacy with Assyria have either suffered a like eclipse--such as the Khati, Urartu, the Cossaeans, and Elam--or have fallen like Egypt and Southern Syria into the rank of second-rate powers. It is Chaldaea which is now in the van of the nations, in company with Lydia and with Media, whose advent to imperial power no one would have ventured to predict forty or fifty years before. The principality founded by Deiokes about the beginning of the seventh century B.C., seemed at first destined to play but a modest part; it shared the fortune of the semi-barbarous states with which the Ninevite conquerors came in contact on the western boundary of the Iranian plateau, and from which the governors of Arrapkha or of Kharkhar had extorted tribute to the utmost as often as occasion offered. According to one tradition, it had only three kings in an entire century: Deiokes up till 655 B.C., Phraortes from 655 to 633, and after the latter year Cyaxares, the hero of his race.* Another tradition claimed an earlier foundation for the monarchy, and doubled both the number of the kings and the age of the kingdom.** * This is the tradition gleaned by Herodotus, probably at Sardes, from the mouths of Persians residing in that city. ** This is the tradition derived from the court of Artaxerxes by Ctesias of Cnidus. Volney discovered the principle upon which the chronology of his Median dynasty was based by Ctesias. If we place his list side by side with that of Herodotus-- [Illustration: 268.jpg and 269.jpg TABLE OF MEDIAN DYNASTY]