The western provinces of the empire did not permit themselves to be drawn into the movement, and Judah, for example, remained faithful to its suzerain till the last moment,* but Sin-shar-ishkun received no help from them, and was obliged to fight his last battles single-handed. He shut himself up in Nineveh, and held out as long as he could; but when all his resources were exhausted--ammunitions of war, men and food supplies--he met his fate as a king, and burnt himself alive in his palace with his children and his wives, rather than fall alive into the hands of his conquerors (608 B.C.). The Babylonians would take no part in pillaging the temples, out of respect for the gods, who were practically identical with their own, but the Medes felt no such scruples. "Their king, the intrepid one, entirely destroyed the sanctuaries of the gods of Assur, and the cities of Accad which had shown themselves hostile to the lord of Accad, and had not rendered him assistance. He destroyed their holy places, and left not one remaining; he devastated their cities, and laid them waste as it were with a hurricane." Nineveh laid low, Assyria no longer existed. After the lapse of a few years, she was named only among the legends of mythical days: two centuries later, her very site was forgotten, and a Greek army passed almost under the shadow of her dismantled towers, without a suspicion that there lay before it all that remained of the city where Semiramis had reigned in her glory.** * It was to oppose the march of Necho _against the King of Assyria_ that Josiah fought the battle of Megiddo (2 Kings xxiii. 29, 30; cf. 2 Chron. xxxv. 20-24, where the mention of the King of Assyria is suppressed). ** This is what the _Ten Thousand_ did when they passed before Larissa and Mespila. The name remained famous, and later on the town which bore it attained a relative importance.