No doubt the courage of the Assyrians was tinged with ferocity. The nation was “a mighty and strong one, which, as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, cast down to the earth with the hand.” Its capital might well deserve to be called “a bloody city,” or “a city of bloods.” Few conquering races have been tender-hearted, or much inclined to spare; and undoubtedly carnage, ruin, and desolation followed upon the track of an Assyrian army, and raised feelings of fear and hatred among their adversaries. But we have no reason to believe that the nation was especially bloodthirsty or unfeeling. The mutilation of the slain--not by way of insult, but in proof of their slayer’s prowess was indeed practised among them; but otherwise there is little indication of any barbarous, much less of any really cruel, usages. The Assyrian listens to the enemy who asks for quarter; he prefers making prisoners to slaying; he is very terrible in the battle and the assault, but afterwards he forgives, and spares. Of course in some cases he makes exceptions. When a town has rebelled and been subdued, he impales some of the most guilty [PLATE XXXV., Fig. 1]; and in two or three instances prisoners are represented as led before the king by a rope fastened to a ring which passes through the under lip, while now and then one appears in the act of being flayed with it knife [PLATE XXXV., Fig. 2.] But, generally, captives are either released, or else transferred, without unnecessary suffering, from their own country to some other portion of the empire. There seems even to be something of real tenderness in the treatment of captured women, who are never manacled, and are often allowed to ride on mules, or in carts. [PLATE XXXVI., Fig. 1.] [Illustration: PLATE 35] [Illustration: PLATE 36] The worst feature in the character of the Assyrians was their treachery. “Woe to thee that spoilest, though thou wast not spoiled, and dealest treacherously, though they dealt not treacherously with thee!” is the denunciation of the evangelical prophet. And in the same spirit the author of “The Burthen of Nineveh” declares that city to be “full of lies and robbery”--or, more correctly, full of lying and violence. Falsehood and treachery are commonly regarded as the vices of the weak, who are driven to defend themselves against superior strength by the weapon of cunning; but they are perhaps quite as often employed by the strong as furnishing short cuts to success, and even where the moral standard is low, as being in themselves creditable. It certainly was not necessity which made the Assyrians covenant-breakers; it seems to have been in part the wantonness of power--because they “despised the cities and regarded no man;” perhaps it was in part also their imperfect moral perception, which may have failed to draw the proper distinction between craft and cleverness.