of the Assyrian Monarchy. 343 
is here to be taken in the sense which it bears in mytho- 
logy, i. e. the East and S.E. not as the region above Egypt, 
its geographical sense. Memnon is called an Assyrian and 
an Ethiopian. In a passage quoted by Valesius, ubis. 
from Basilius Saleucencis, on the martyrdom of Thecla, 
Tarsus is called the city Zavde tov HpaxAtous rou Auurpuwros 5 
which leads us to the real fact that Sandan was a title of 
Hercules. “ Agathias ex Beroso, Athenocle, & Syme 
macho testatur, Hercules Persis 2avdns- dicebatur.’ The 
Persians proper cannot be meant here, whose worship was 
of quite a different kind, but the Assyrians, who are often 
called so by later writers. Thus Baal is said to be a 
Persian name for Mars by Joannes Malela. We see then 
that Sardanapallus, the founder of Tarsus, identifies him- 
self with the deity in Assyrian mythology who answered 
to the Grecian Hercules—but Hercules and Mars were in 
this mythology the same; (vid. supra) Sardanapallus is 
therefore identified with Ninyas, Ninus, Belus whom we 
have already seen to be the solar god, worshipped under 
this character. We need then no more suppose two Sar- 
danapalli, from the seemingly inconsistent traits related 
of him, than that it was one Hercules who played the glut- 
ton and the drunkard in the house of Admetus, and spun 
in female clothes among the maidens of Omphale, and ano- 
ther who established his pillars at the Western extremity 
of the world, and built cities on the frontiers of India, 
Antiquaries have doubted whether some of the figures on 
the coins of Tarsus represent Hercules or Sardanapallus, 
“ Duos Tarsenses numos Begerus exhibet Th. Br. 1. 507, 
quorum figuram stantem Sardanapalli esse contendit, ur- 
bis Tarsi conditoris, cui coronam & poculum, luxds in- 
dicia, et suppositum animal quod Jupum cervarium ar- 
pitratur, voracitatis symbolum, apprimé conyenire adfir- 
mat. Quidsi Hercules sit??? Rasche Lex, Num, tv. 2.21. 
If the opinion which I have advanced be well founded, 
