[31] {106}["Then the king caused a huge pile of wood to be made in the palace court, and heaped together upon it all his gold, silver, and royal apparel, and enclosing his eunuchs and concubines in an apartment within the pile, caused it to be set on fire, and burned himself and them together."--Diod. Siculi _Bibl. Hist._, lib. ii. cap. 81A. "And he also erected on the funeral pile a chamber 100 feet long, made of wood, and in it he had couches spread, and there he himself lay down with his wife, and his concubines lay on other couches around.... And he made the roof of the apartment of large stout beams, and there all the walls of it he made of numerous thick planks, so that it was impossible to escape out of it,... And ... he bade the slaves set fire to the pile; and it was fifteen days burning. And those who saw the smoke wondered, and thought that he was celebrating a great sacrifice, but the eunuchs alone knew what was really being done. And in this way Sardanapalus, who had spent his life in extraordinary luxury, died with as much magnanimity as possible."--Athenæus, _Deipnosophistæ_, bk. xii. cap. 38. See _Abydenus apud Eusebium_, Præp. Ev. 9. 41. 4; Euseb., _Chron_., 1878, p. 42, ed. A. Schoene. Saracus was the last king of Assyria, and being invaded by Cyaxares and a faithless general Nabopolassar ... "unable to resist them, took counsel of despair, and after all means of resistance were exhausted, burned himself in his palace." "The self-immolation of Saracus has a parallel in the conduct of the Israelitish king Zimri, who, 'when he saw that the city was taken, went into the palace of the king's house, and burnt the king's house over him, and died' (1 Kings xvi. 18); and again in that of the Persian governor Boges, who burnt himself with his wives and children at Eion (Herod., vii. 107)."--_The Five Great Monarchies, etc._, by Rev. G. Rawlinson, 1871, ii. 232, note 4.] [aq] {109} _Funeréal_----.--[MS. M.] [ar] _And strew the earth with, ashes_----.--[MS. M. erased.] [as] {110} ----_And what is there_ _An Indian widow dares for custom which_ _A Greek girl_----.--[MS. M. erased.] [32] {111}[Bishop Heber (_Quarterly Review_, July, 1821, vol. xxvii. p. 503) takes exception to these lines on the ground that they "involve an anachronism, inasmuch as, whatever date be assigned to the erection of the earlier pyramids, there can be no reason for apprehending that, at the fall of Nineveh, and while the kingdom and hierarchy of Egypt subsisted in their full splendour, the destination of those immense fabrics could have been a matter of doubt.... Herodotus, three hundred years later, may have been misinformed on these points," etc., etc. According to modern Egyptology, the erection of the "earlier pyramids" was an event of remotest antiquity when the Assyrian Empire was in its infancy.]