304 On Scriptural and profane Accounts 
when he would not only find no roads to fa- 
cilitate the marches of his troops, nor culti- 
vated countries from which to feed them, but 
when not even the multitudes were in exis- 
tence, who are said to have swollen his ar- 
mies. 
The history of all the countries which Ni- 
nus is said to have conquered, and his succes- 
sors to have held, is inconsistent with the Cte- . 
sian account. I have already stated, that no 
Assyrian conqueror appears in Jewish history 
till the eighth century before Christ ; and the 
same negative proof may be derived from the 
annals of all the other countries over which 
his empire is said to have extended. (°) La- 
ter writers indeed make Priam to have been 
tributary to a king of Assyria, but the whole 
of the Iliad is evidence against the truth of 
this account. 
But the exploits of Ninus and Semiramis 
are scarcely more wonderful than the long 
line of their inactive successors. Thirty-six 
kings, from Ninyas to Sardanapallus, sat 
upon the throne of this mighty monarchy ; 
and history, which has preserved the names of 
them all, has not a single fact to relate con- 
cerning them. The impossibility of this has 
been so strongly argued by the learned au- 
thors of the Anc. Univ. Hist.rv. 299, note 
