desirable, they had restrained themselves in using it, and humoured the idiosyncrasies of the inhabitants.  Tiglath-pileser III, Shalmaneser V., and Sargon had all preferred to be legally crowned as sovereigns of Babylon instead of remaining merely its masters by right of conquest, and though Sennacherib had refused compliance with the traditions by which his predecessors had submitted to be bound, he had behaved with unwonted lenity after quelling the two previous revolts.  He now recognised that his clemency had been shown in vain, and his small stock of patience was completely exhausted just when fate threw the rebellious city into his power.  If the inhabitants had expected to be once more let off easily, their illusions were speedily dissipated:  they were slain by the sword as if they had been ordinary foes, such as Jews, Tibarenians, or Kalda of Bit-Yakin, and they were spared none of the horrors which custom then permitted the stronger to inflict upon the weaker.  For several days the pitiless massacre lasted.  Young and old, all who fell into the hands of the soldiery, perished by the sword; piles of corpses filled the streets and the approaches to the temples, especially the avenue of winged bulls which led to E-sagilla, and, even after the first fury of carnage had been appeased, it was only to be succeeded by more organised pillage.  Mushezib-marduk was sent into exile with his family, and immense convoys of prisoners and spoil followed him.  The treasures carried off from the royal palace, the temples, and the houses of the rich nobles were divided among the conquerors:  they comprised gold, silver, precious stones, costly stuffs, and provisions of all sorts.  The sacred edifices were sacked, the images hacked to pieces or carried off to Nineveh:  Bel-Marduk, introduced into the sanctuary of Assur, became subordinate to the rival deity amid a crowd of strange gods.  In the inmost recess of a chapel were discovered some ancient statues of Kamman and Shala of E-kallati, which Marduk-nadin-akhe had carried off in the time of Tiglath-pileser I., and these were brought back in triumph to their own land, after an absence of four hundred and eighteen years.  The buildings themselves suffered a like fate to that of their owners and their gods.  “The city and its houses, from foundation to roof, I destroyed them, I demolished them, I burnt them with fire; walls, gateways, sacred chapels, and the towers of earth and tiles, I laid them all low and cast them into the Arakhtu.”  The incessant revolts of the people justified this wholesale destruction.  Babylon, as we have said before, was too powerful to be reduced for long to the second rank in a Mesopotamian empire:  as soon as fate established the seat of empire in the districts bordering on the Euphrates and the middle course of the Tigris, its well-chosen situation, its size, its riches, the extent of its population, the number of its temples, and the beauty of its palaces, all conspired to make it the capital