bulls, goats, and stags, so requently introduced into their basreliefs; it is highly probable, therefore, that they carefully copied the forms of their horses, and showed the points for which they were most distinguished. It is not unlikely that the plains watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, producing during the winter and spring the richest pasturage, were at the earliest period as celebrated as they are now for the rearing of horses; particularly when so large a supply must have been required for the cavalry and chariots of the Assyrian armies. At a later period, indeed, we find the plains of Babylonia furnishing horses to the Persians, both for the private use of the king and for his troops. It may, therefore, be conjectured that they were of the most noble and celebrated breeds; for the Persians, being masters of the greater part of Asia and of Egypt, could have obtained horses, had they found better, from elsewhere. According to Herodotus, the stud maintained by the Babylonians for the Persian monarch included 800 stallions and 16,000 mares.† It may have been derived by the Persians from those whom they conquered; and it is not improbable that the Assyrians themselves supplied their cavalry from similar studs kept up near Babylon, or in other parts of the Mesopotamian plains. Amongst the objects of tribute brought by the Ruten-nu to the Egyptians, in the time of Thothmes III., are particularly mentioned brood-mares; and this people, it will be shown, are supposed to have inhabited Assyria Proper, or some country immediately adjacent.

* According to Xenophon (Cyrop. lib... c. 3) it was very difficult to breed horses in Persia Proper; and it was a rare thing to see a horse in the country, which was too mountainous for riding. This must apply only to the most western and northern provinces; but even this part of Persia now produces a very good horse, probably originally bred from the Turcoman and Arab. The site of the Nisæan plains, so celebrated for their horses, has not yet been satisfactorily determined. Major Rawlinson believes them to have been somewhere in the mountains of Luris(Notes on a March through Susiana: Journal of the Geographical Society.) + Lib. i. c. 192.

tan.

↑ Birch's Memoir on the Statistical Tablet of Karnak, p. 44.

CHAPTER V.

As the Assyrians possessed disciplined and organized troops, it is probable that they were also acquainted, to a certain extent, with military tactics, and that their battles were fought upon some kind of system. We know that such was the case with the Egyptians; and their monuments show that amongst their enemies, also, there were nations not unacquainted with the military science. They had bodies of troops in reserve; they advanced and retreated in rank, and performed various manœuvres. Although, in the Assyrian sculptures, we have no attempt at an actual representation of the general plan of a battle, as in some Egyptian bas-reliefs, yet, from the order in which the soldiers are drawn up before the castle walls, and from the phalanx which they then appear to form, it seems highly probable that similar means were adopted to resist the assaults of the enemy in the open field.

The king himself, attended by his vizir, his eunuchs, and principal officers of state was present in battle, and not only commanded, but took an active part in the affray. Even Sardanapalus, when called upon to place himself at the head of his armies to meet the invading Medes, showed a courage equal to the occasion, and repulsed his enemies. Like the Persian monarchs who succeeded him in the dominion of Asia, the Assyrian king was accompanied to the war, however distant its seat might be, by his wives, his concubines, and his children, and by an enormous retinue of servants. Even his nobles were similarly attended. Their couches were of gold

and silver, and the hangings of the ichest materials. Vessels of the same precious metals were used at their tables; their tents were made of the most costly stuffs, and were even adorned with precious stones.* They were also accompanied by musicians, who are represented in the sculptures as walking before the warriors, on their triumphant return from battle.

The army was followed by a crowd of sutlers, servants, and grooms; who, whilst adding to its bulk, acted as an impediment upon its movements, and carried ruin and desolation into the countries through which it passed. This multitude could not even depend entirely for supplies upon the inhabitants, whom they unmercifully pillaged; but provisions in great abundance, as well as live stock, were carried with them. Holofernes, in marching from Nineveh with his army, took with him "camels and asses for their carriage, a very great number, and sheep, and oxen, and goats without number for their provision; and plenty of victuals for every man.”+

Quintus Curtius thus describes the march of a Persian army-The signal was given from the tent of the king, on the top of which, so as to be seen by all, was placed an image of the sun, in crystal. The holy fire was borne on altars of silver, surrounded by the priests chanting their sacred hymns. They were followed by three hundred and sixty-five youths, according to the number of the days in the year, dressed in purple garments. The chariot, dedicated to the supreme deity

*The canopy or tent of Holofernes was of purple, gold, and emeralds, and precious stones; and every man had gold and silver (vessels) out of the king's house. Judith, x. 24. This book contains an interesting account of the luxurious manner of living of the great Assyrian warriors, confirming what has been said in the text, and showing that the Persians were, in this respect, as almost in every other, imitators of the Assyrians Herodotus lib. ix. c. 82 and 83) describes the equipage, furnished with gold and silver, and with various colored hangings, and the gold and silver couches and tables, found in the tents of Mardonius after the defeat of the Persian army. They had been left by Xerxes when he fled from Greece. 7 Judith, ii. 17.

Lib. iii. c. 3; and compare Herodotus's description of the army of Xerxes, 1. vii c. 61.

stones.

(Jovi), or to the sun, was drawn by snow-white horses, led by grooms wearing white garments, and carrying golden wands. The horse especially consecrated to the sun was chosen from its size. it was followed by ten chariots, embossed with gold and silver, and by the cavalry of twelve nations, dressed in their various costumes, and carrying their peculiar arms. Then came the Persian immortals, ten thousand in number, adorned with golden chains, and wearing robes embroidered with gold, with long-sleeved tunics, all glittering with precious At a short interval fifteen thousand nobles, who bore the honorable title of relations of the king, walked in garments which, in magnificence and luxury, more resembled those of women than of men. The doryphori (a chosen company of spearmen) preceded the chariot in which the king himself sat, high above the surrounding multitude. On either side of this chariot were the effigies of the gods in gold and silver. The yoke was inlaid with the rarest jewels. From it projected two golden figures of Ninus† and Belus, each a cubit in length. A golden eagle with outspread wings was placed between them. The king was distinguished, from all those who surrounded him, by the magnificence of his robes, and by the cidaris, or mitre, upon his head. By his side walked two hundred of his most noble relations. Ten thousand warriors, bearing spears, whose staffs were of silver and heads of gold, followed the royal chariot. The king's led horses, forty in number, and thirty thousand footmen, concluded the procession. At the distance of one stadium, followed the mother and wife of the king, in chariots. A crowd of women, the handmaidens and ladies of the queens, accompanied them on horseback.

That the custom of dedicating chariots and horses to the sun prevailed in Asia long before the Persian domination, we learn from the passage in 2 Kings, xxiii. 11, where Josiah is described as taking away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech, the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burning the chariots of the sun with fire.

+ Some MSS. have "War and Peace." Ninus was an emendation first suggested by Scaliger.

Fifteen cars, called armamaxæ, carried the children of the king, their tutors and nurses, and the eunuchs. The king's three hundred and sixty concubines, who accompanied him, were adorned with royal splendor. Six hundred mules, and three hundred camels bore the royal treasury, guarded by the archers. The friends and relations of the ladies were mingled with a crowd of cooks, and servants of all kinds. The procession was closed by the light-armed troops.

The armies were provided with the engines and materials necessary for the siege of the cities they might meet with, in their expedition. If any natural obstructions impeded the approach to a castle, such as a forest or a river, they were, if possible, removed. Rivers were turned out of their courses if they impeded the operations of the army;* and warriors are frequently represented in the sculptures, cutting down trees which surround a hostile city.

The first step, on attacking a hostile city, was probably to advance the battering-ram. If the castle was built, as in the plains of Assyria and Babylonia, upon an artificial eminence, an inclined plane, reaching to the summit of the mound, was formed of earth, stones, or trees, and the besiegers were then able to bring their engines to the foot of the walls. This road was not unfrequently covered with bricks, forming a kind of paved way, up which the ponderous machines could be drawn without much difficulty.

This mode of reaching the wails of a city is frequently alluded to by the prophets, and is described by Isaiah :-" Thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it." Similar

In the Stratagemata of Frontinus (1. iii. c. 7, s. 5), Semiramis, like Cyrus, is said to have taken Babylon by turning off the river.

+ Chap. xxxvii. 33; and compare 2 Kings, xix. 32; Jeremiah, xxxii. 24, and xxxiii. 4. The shields mentioned by the prophet were probably the large kind made of wicker-work, represented in the Nimroud sculptures, and used exclusively for a siege; those carried by the warriors in battle being smaller, and generaly round.