Such, then, are the traditions of the Greeks with respect to this monarch.  The stories told by Ctesias of a king, to whom he gives the same name, and repeated from him by later writers, are probably not intended to have any reference to Asshur-bani-pal, the son of Esar-haddon, but rather refer to his successor, the last king.  Even Ctesias could scarcely have ventured to depict to his countrymen the great Asshur-bani-pal, the vanquisher of Tirhakah, the subduer of the tribes beyond the Taurus, the powerful and warlike monarch whose friendship was courted by the rich and prosperous Gyges, king of Lydia, as a mere voluptuary, who never put his foot outside the palace gates, but dwelt in the seraglio, doing woman’s work, and often dressed as a woman.  The character of Asshur-bani-pal stands really in the strongest contrast to the description—­be it a portrait, or be it a mere sketch from fancy—­which Ctesias gives of his Sardanapalus.  Asshur-bani-pal, was beyond a doubt one of Assyria’s greatest kings.  He subdued Egypt and Susiana; he held quiet possession of the kingdom of Babylon; he carried his arms deep into Armenia; he led his troops across the Taurus, and subdued the barbarous tribes of Asia Minor.  When he was not engaged in important wars, he chiefly occupied himself in the chase of the lion, and in the construction and ornamentation of temples and palaces.  His glory was well known to the Greeks.  He was no doubt one of the “two kings called Sardanapalus,” celebrated by Hellanicus; he must have been “the warlike Sardanapalus” of Cailisthenes; Herodotus spoke of his great wealth; and Aristophanes used his name as a by-word for magnificence.  In his reign the Assyrian dominions reached their greatest extent, Assyrian art culminated, and the empire seemed likely to extend itself over the whole of the East.  It was then, indeed, that Assyria most completely answered the description of the Prophet—­“The Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.  The waters made him great; the deep set him up on high with her rivers running about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.  Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long, because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.  All the fowls of the heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.  Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches for his root was by great waters.  The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him; the fir-trees were not like his boughs; and the chestnut-trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.”