Note 434 — Chapter XVII · LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.

Here again both Larcher and Mr. Clinton represent the time, at which the Medes made themselves independent of Assyria, as perfectly ascertained, though Larcher places it in 748 B. C., and Mr. Clinton in 711 B. C. “L’époque ne me paroit pas douteuse,” (Chronologie, c. iv, p. 157,) says Larcher. Mr. Clinton treats the epoch of 711 B. C. for the same event, as fixed upon “the authority of Scripture” and reasons upon it in more than one place as a fact altogether indisputable (Appendix, c. iii, p. 259): “We may collect from Scripture that the Medes did not become independent till after the death of Sennacherib; and accordingly Josephus (Ant. x, 2), having related the death of this king, and the miraculous recovery of Hezekiah from sickness, adds—ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ συνέβη τὴν τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχὴν ὑπὸ Μήδων καταλυθῆναι. But the death of Sennacherib, as will be shown hereafter, is determined to the beginning of 711 B. C. The Median revolt, then, did not occur before B. C. 711; which refutes Conringius, who raises it to B. C. 715, and Valckenaer, who raises it to B. C. 741. Herodotus, indeed, implies an interval of some space between the revolt of the Medes and the election of Dêïokês to be king. But these anni ἀβασίλευτοι could not have been prior to the fifty-three years of Dêïokês, since the revolt is limited by Scripture to B. C. 711.” Again, p. 261, he says, respecting the four Median kings mentioned by Eusebius before Dêïokês: “If they existed at all, they governed Media during the empire of the Assyrians, as we know from Scripture.” And again, p. 280: “The precise date of the termination (of the Assyrian empire) in B. C. 711 is given by Scripture, with which Herodotus agrees,” etc.

Mr. Clinton here treats, more than once, the revolt of the Medes as fixed to the year 711 B. C. by Scripture; but he produces no passage of Scripture to justify his allegation: and the passage which he cites from Josephus alludes, not to the Median revolt, but to the destruction of the Assyrian empire by the Medes. Herodotus represents the Medes as revolting from the Assyrian empire, and maintaining their independence for some time (undefined in extent) before the election of Dêïokês as king; but he gives us no means of determining the date of the Median revolt; and when Mr. Clinton says (p. 280, Note O.): “I suppose Herodotus to place the revolt of the Medes in Olymp. 17, 2, since he places the accession of Dêïokês in Olymp. 17, 3,”—this is a conjecture of his own: and the narrative of Herodotus seems plainly to imply that he conceived an interval far greater than one year between these two events. Diodorus gives the same interval as lasting “for many generations.” (Diod. ii, 32.)

We know—both from Scripture and from the Phœnician annals, as cited by Josephus—that the Assyrians of Nineveh were powerful conquerors in Syria, Judæa, and Phœnicia, during the reigns of Salmaneser and Sennacherib: the statement of Josephus farther implies that Media was subject to Salmaneser, who took the Israelites from their country into Media and Persis, and brought the Cuthæans out of Media and Persis into the lands of the Israelites (Joseph. ix, 14, 1; x, 9, 7). We know farther, that after Sennacherib, the Assyrians of Nineveh are no more mentioned as invaders or disturbers of Syria or Judæa; the Chaldæans or Babylonians become then the enemies whom those countries have to dread. Josephus tells us, that at this epoch the Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Medes,—or, as he says in another place, by the Medes and Babylonians (x, 2, 2; x, 5, 1). This is good evidence for believing that the Assyrian empire of Nineveh sustained at this time a great shock and diminution of power; but as to the nature of this diminution, and the way in which it was brought about, it appears to me that there is a discrepancy of authorities which we have no means of reconciling,—Josephus follows the same view as Ktêsias, of the destruction of the empire of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians united, while Herodotus conceives successive revolts of the territories dependent upon Nineveh, beginning with that of the Medes, and still leaving Nineveh flourishing and powerful in its own territory: he farther conceives Nineveh as taken by Kyaxarês the Mede, about the year 600 B. C., without any mention of Babylonians,—on the contrary, in his representation, Nitokris the queen of Babylon is afraid of the Medes (i, 185), partly from the general increase of their power, but especially from their having taken Nineveh (though Mr. Clinton tells us, p. 275, that “Nineveh was destroyed B. C. 606, as we have seen from the united testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, by the Medes and Babylonians.”)

Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he conceived the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800 and 560 B. C. differently on many material points from Ktêsias, or Berosus, or Josephus: and he himself expressly tells us, that he heard “four different tales” even respecting Cyrus (i, 95); much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than a century.

The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. C., acquires some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within certain limits; but above the year 700 B. C. no such fixed points can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the mythical in our authorities,—we cannot reconcile them with each other, except by violent changes and conjectures,—nor can we determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from Nabonassar, in the Canon of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic, but they are names and dates only: when we come to apply them to illustrate real or supposed matters of fact, drawn from other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for even the names of the kings as reported by different authors do not agree and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the identity of Eastern kings, the times and the transactions are better guides than the names; for these, from many well-known causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing through the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an epithet for the name), are variously reported, so that the same king frequently appears under many different appellations.” Here, then, is a new problem: we are to employ “the times and transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately the times are marked only by the succession of kings, and the transactions are known only by statements always scanty and often irreconcilable with each other. So that our means of identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, and whoever will examine the process of identification as it appears in Mr. Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree arbitrary; more arbitrary still are the processes which he employs for bringing about a forced harmony between discrepant authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’Hérodote, vol. i, pp. 383-429) more satisfactory in his chronological results.