Of the incidents of the war, which Cyaxares and Nabopolassar commenced in the year 609 B.C. against Assyria, we have no account. According to the songs of the Medes, which lie at the base of the account of Ctesias, it continued three years; many severe battles were fought, with varying fortune, before Nineveh could be invested. The capture of the city was finally achieved, because the Tigris carried away a portion of the city walls. When Xenophon marched past Chalah, which he calls Larissa, 200 years after the fall of Nineveh, and found long strips of wall 120 feet high still standing, he was informed that the king of the Persians, when he took the dominion from the Medes, could not by any means capture the lofty and strong walls of this city of the Medes (II. 16). A cloud hid the sun, and made the city invisible till the inhabitants had left it; and thus it was taken. At that time the queen of the Medes fled to Mespila (the name given by Xenophon to Nineveh), where he saw the walls still standing of the height of 150 feet. This city the king of the Persians could not take, either by length of siege or by storm, till Zeus had dazed the inhabitants by lightning: then the city was taken.[559] The memory of the Assyrian kingdom had at that time so entirely disappeared, that Xenophon's guides could put the Medes in the place of the Persians, the Persians in the place of the Medes, and the king of the Persians in the place of Cyaxares. In Abydenus we are told, after the excerpt of Eusebius: Nabopolassar (Bussalossorus), after marrying his son to the daughter of the king of the Medes, marched against Nineveh. "When Saracus heard of this, he burnt himself and the royal citadel."[560] Polyhistor, following the excerpt of Syncellus, tells us: Nabopolassar, sent out by Saracus as a leader of his army, turned against his master, and marched against Nineveh. In fear of his approach, Saracus burnt himself with his palace.[561] Strabo tells us: "Nineveh was destroyed soon after the break up of the dominion of the Medes."[562] At the year 607 B.C., Eusebius and Hieronymus observe: "Cyaxares the Mede destroys Nineveh."