THK I'HINCIl'LKS OF WORLD-EMPIRE. 



L5 



But the world-empire of Sargon and Sennacherib passed 

 quickly, and for two causes, both inseparable from their methods. 

 First, Assyria was drained of its manhood to fill the ranks 

 of the army. Next, the policy of " frightfulness " filled the 

 surrounding nations with such a dee]) hatred against Assyria 

 that they all combined against her. Of the Assyrian armies it 

 had been true 



" A fire devoureth before them ; 



And behind them a flame burneth ; 



The land is as the Garden of Eden before them, 



And behind them a desolate wilderness ; 



Yea, and nothing shall escape them." 



But the day came when judgment was poured out upon the 

 city of blood, and Nineveh was laid waste : so utterly waste, 

 that in comparatively few years its very site had been forgotten. 

 "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; 

 And that which is done is that which shall be done ; 

 And there is no new thing under the sun." 

 The house of Sargon, the city of Nineveh, and the Assyrian 

 nation perished. 



World-empire fell to another king, to another nation, and 

 became centred in another city. Nebuchadnezzar, King of 

 Babylon, succeeded to the power and to much of the dominions 

 of Sargon. He and his kingdom passed away in turn, but still 

 the Empire remained : first under the rule of the Medes, then 

 under Cyrus and his Persians : and it was yet further extended 

 under Darius, the son of Hystaspes. Then, a century and a 

 half later, the Empire was wrested from the feeble hands of a 

 later Darius by Alexander the Macedonian. Thus the World- 

 Empire which had once been Assyrian, and had become in 

 succession Babylonian, Median, Persian, became nominally Greek. 



There is a legend of the temple raised to Diana in the grove 

 of Aricia that the priest who served in it and who reigned as 

 king over its sanctuary, won his right to that twofold office by 

 the murder of his predecessor ; and he himself kept it only till 

 he fell under the dagger of the murderer who should succeed 

 him. So these old-world conquerors succeeded each other by 

 the claim that consecrated " the ghastly priest " of the Arician 

 grove : — 



" The priest that slew the slaj^er, 

 And must himself be slain." 



And such, sooner or later, must be the fate of any attempt to 

 found world-empire by the power of the sword. " All they that 

 take the sword shall perish with the sword." 



