Feasting played an important rôle in the heyday of Nineveh's grandeur, as also in the Babylon of later days. The king has just returned from a great triumph in the Westland. The whole city is agog. For days the round of drinking and carousing has proceeded, till the whole city is drunken. The queen wishes to have a part in the expressions of victory and rejoicing. She, with some trepidation, invites the king to dine with her in her apartments in the harem. At the appointed hour all is arranged. The gorgeous couch the queen has prepared for the king to recline upon while he sips his wine scented with aromatic spices, the rich drapery of the couch, the small table near by, laden with golden and silver vessels of costliness and elegance, the slaves who attend upon the lord's wishes, the poet-laureate to sing the conqueror's praises in elaborate lines of flattery--all conspire to make the occasion one of great magnificence. Thus, from king and queen to the lowliest of the great city, the spirit of revelry, the love of carousal, and the habit of intoxication, took hold of the luxuriant capital. We recognize the appropriateness of the familiar words of Nahum, the Hebrew prophet of Elkosh, who had been an eyewitness of the growing effeminacy of the great Assyrian capital, Nineveh, when he foretold the fall of the once glorious city: "Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women, the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thy enemies; the fire shall devour thy bars." How did the ordinary housewife spend her time? M. Maspero attempts to reproduce the daily life of the Assyrian woman of about the eighth century before the Christian era in these graphic words: