assassination, she at once abdicated in his favour, in order to save him from committing a crime, and then transformed herself into a dove; this last incident betrays the goddess to us.  Ninos and Semiramis are purely mythical, and their mighty deeds, like those ascribed to Ishtar and Gilgames, must be placed in the same category as those other fables with which the Babylonian legends strive to fill up the blank of the prehistoric period.*

     * The legend of Ninos and Semiramis is taken from Diodorus
     Siculus, who reproduces, often word for word, the version of
     Ctesias.

[Illustration:  172.jpg the dove-goddess]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch published in Longperier.

The real facts were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant than those supplied by popular imagination.  It would be a mistake, however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage.  It was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single day’s respite, that Rome succeeded in forging the weapons with which she was to conquer the world; and any one who, repelled by their tedious sameness, neglected to follow the history of her early struggles, would find great difficulty in understanding how it came about that a city which had taken centuries to subjugate her immediate neighbours should afterwards overcome all the states on the Mediterranean seaboard with such magnificent ease.  In much the same way the ceaseless struggles of Assyria with the Chaldaeans, and with the mountain tribes of the Zagros Chain, were unconsciously preparing her for those lightning-like campaigns in which she afterwards overthrew all the civilized nations of the Bast one after another.  It was only at the cost of unparalleled exertions that she succeeded in solidly welding together the various provinces within her borders, and in kneading (so to speak) the many and diverse elements of her vast population into one compact mass, containing in itself all that was needful for its support, and able to bear the strain of war for several years at time without giving way, and rich enough in men and horses to provide the material for an effective army without excessive impoverishment of her trade or agriculture.

[Illustration:  173.jpg AN ASSYRIAN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a painted bas-relief given in Layard.

The race came of an old Semitic strain, somewhat crude as yet, and almost entirely free from that repeated admixture of foreign elements which had marred the purity of the Babylonian stock.  The monuments show us a type similar in many respects to that which we find to-day on the slopes of Singar, or in the valleys to the east of Mossul.