conquests to the very century, and almost to the very time, when they were in fact suffering reverses at the hands of the people over whom he represented them as triumphant.  There was a boldness in the notion of thus inverting history which almost deserved, and to a considerable extent obtained, success.  The “long chronology” of Ctesias kept its ground until recently, not indeed meeting with universal acceptance, but on the whole predominating over the “short chronology” of Herodotus; and it may be doubted whether anything less than the discovery that the native records of Assyria entirely contradicted Ctesias would have sufficed to drive from the field his figment of early Median dominion.

The second occasion upon which we hear of the Medes in the Assyrian annals is in the reign of Shalmanoser’s son and successor, Shamas-Vul.  Here again, as on the former occasion, the Assyrians were the aggressors.  Shamas-Vul invaded Media and Arazias in his third year, and committed ravages similar to those of his father, wasting the country with fire and sword, but not (it would seem) reducing the Medes to subjection, or even attempting to occupy their territory.  Again the attack is a mere raid, which produces no permanent impression.

It is in the reign of the son and successor of Shamas-Vul that the Medes appear for the first time to have made their submission and accepted the position of Assyrian tributaries.  A people which was unable to offer effectual resistance when the Assyrian levies invaded their country, and which had no means of retaliating upon their foe or making him suffer the evils that he inflicted, was naturally tempted to save itself from molestation by the payment of an annual tribute, so purchasing quiet at the expense of honor and independence.  Towards the close of the ninth century B.C. the Medes seem to have followed the example set them very much earlier by their kindred and neighbors, the Persians, and to have made arrangements for an annual payment which should exempt their territory from ravage.  It is doubtful whether the arrangement was made by the whole people.  The Median tribes at this time hung so loosely together that a policy adopted by one portion of them might be entirely repudiated by another.  Most probably the tribute was paid by those tribes only which boarded on Zagros, and not by those further to the east or to the north, into whose territories the Assyrian arms has not yet penetrated.

No further change in the condition of the Medes is known to have occurred until about a hundred years later, when the Assyrians ceased to be content with the semi-independent position which had been hitherto allowed them, and determined on their more complete subjugation.  The great Sargon, the assailant of Egypt and conqueror of Babylon, towards the middle of his reign, invaded Media with a large army, and having rapidly overrun the country, seized several of the towns, and “annexed them to Assyria,”