Setting aside any conclusions of this kind, even tradition can only have regarded the beginning of the struggle for freedom as the beginning of liberation, if it covered the nucleus of a firm resistance, either in some definite district, or in a dynasty which took the lead in the struggle and carried it on. Herodotus is not acquainted with any leader in the struggle and does not mention any, while the campaigns of the Assyrians are always directed against a greater or less number of princes and cities; sometimes they fall on this chieftain and sometimes on that.[477] If, moreover, the fact that Sargon receives tribute from twenty-five, then from twenty-two, and then from forty-five chieftains, is brought forward to confirm the narratives of Herodotus about the anarchy which prevailed among the Medes, it is not the separation of the Medes under different chiefs which constitutes the anarchy as described by Herodotus, but actual lawlessness. His description gives us no chieftains in Media, ruling their lands as captains in war and judges in peace. The Medes dwell in villages, and the inhabitants choose the village judge, though it is in their power to go for decision to another village. Chieftains, even if they had not forbidden their tribes to seek for justice out of the tribe, would in any case have left the decision of Deioces unnoticed. However this may be, one harsh contradiction between the narrative of Herodotus and the inscriptions cannot be removed by any exposition or any deductions. According to Herodotus Deioces reigned from the year 708 to 655 B.C., Phraortes from 655 to 633 B.C., over the whole of Media. The inscriptions of Sennacherib mention the great payment of tribute by the distant land of Media, and its subjugation under Sennacherib (p. 282); Esarhaddon removes two chieftains with their flocks and subjects out of Media from the border of the land of Bikni to Asshur, and three chiefs from the same district bring their tribute to Nineveh; he places his viceroys over them, and they unite this district with Assyria. After the year 660 B.C. Assurbanipal is said to have taken a chieftain of Media captive; and in the inscriptions there is nowhere any mention of Deioces, Phraortes, and the Median kingdom.