while at the same time he also established in new situations a number of fortified posts.  The object was evidently to incorporate Media into the empire; and the posts wore stations in which a standing army was placed, to overawe the natives and prevent them from offering an effectual resistance.  With the same view deportation of the people on a large scale seems to have been practised and the gaps thus made in the population were filled up—­wholly or in part—­by the settlement in the Median cities of Samaritan captives.  On the country thus re-organized and re-arranged a tribute of a new character was laid.  In lieu of the money payment hitherto exacted, the Medes were required to furnish annually to the royal stud a number of horses.  It is probable that Media was already famous for the remarkable breed which is so celebrated in later times; and that the horses now required of her by the Assyrians were to be of the large and highly valued kind known as “Nisaean.”

The date of this subjugation is about B.C. 710.  And here, if we compare the Greek accounts of Median history with those far more authentic ones which have reached us through the Assyrian contemporary records, we are struck by a repetition of the same device which came under our notice more than a century earlier—­the device of covering up the nation’s disgraces at a particular period by assigning to that very date certain great and striking successes.  As Ctesias’s revolt of the Medes under Arbaces and conquest of Nineveh synchronizes nearly with the first known ravages of Assyria within the territories of the Medes, so Herodotus’s revolt of the same people and commencement of their monarchy under Deioces falls almost exactly at the date when they entirely lose their independence.  As there is no reason to suspect Herodotus either of partiality toward the Medes or of any wilful departure from the truth, we must regard him as imposed upon by his informants, who were probably either Medes or Persians.  These mendacious patriots found little difficulty in palming their false tale upon the simple Halicarnassian, thereby at once extending the antiquity of their empire and concealing its shame behind a halo of fictitious glory.

After their subjugation by Sargon the Medes of Media Magna appear to have remained the faithful subjects of Assyria for sixty or seventy years.  During this period we find no notices of the great mass of the nation in the Assyrian records:  only here and there indications occur that Assyria is stretching out her arms towards the more distant and outlying tribes, especially those of Azerbijan, and compelling them to acknowledge her as mistress.  Sennacherib boasts that early in his reign, about B.C. 702, he received an embassy from the remoter parts of Media—­“parts of which the kings his fathers had not even heard”—­which brought him presents in sign of submission, and patiently accepted his yoke.  His son, Esar-haddon, relates that, about his tenth year (B.C. 671) he invaded Bikni