318 On Scriptural and profane Accounts 
in both. Among the Assyrians, he was the 
god of war, and therefore identified by the 
Greeks with Mars, as well as Jupiter. His- 
tizeus, quoted by Josephus (sce note 8.) calls 
him 205 ’Ewaaws, Jupiter-Mars ; and the Alex- 
andrine Chronicle explains Baza cos by *Agns 
moreuixos; Perhaps then we may venture to 
consider it as proved, that the first person 
mentionedin Assyrian history was not’a king- 
deified, but a god converted into a king. 
Were there no other circumstance respecting 
Ninus and Ninyas, which made their historical 
existence dubious, than that their names coin- 
cide with the city which was their metropolis, 
and which the elder of them was said to have 
founded ; this would excite a reasonable sus- 
picion, that they had been invented to furnish 
an etymology for Nineveh. No one, who has 
not made it the subject of particular investi- 
gation, can have any idea of the extent to 
which the ancients have corrupted history, by 
deducing the names of countries, rivers, 
mountains and towns from personages of sup- 
posed historical existence, but really having 
no other being than in the legend framed to 
account for the name. (**) The names Ni- | 
nus and Ninyas correspond with the difference 
between the Greek and the oriental way of 
spelling Nineveh, the former calling it Noo; 
