BABYLON AND PERSIA

VIILLYDIA AND ASIA MINORTHE BALANCE OF POWERIN TIIE EAST.I. A GLANCE at the map shows that the doom ofJudah and the other .Syrian states was inevitable.Their position made it a necessity for whoever ruledin Mesopotamia to take and to hold them. Theyreally were part and parcel of the Assyrian inheri¬tance, and when the founders of a Chaldean mon¬archy at Babylon entered into that inheritance, itwas but natural that they should reach out for theseashore and keep a heavy master's hand on allthat lay between. The case was different withsuch countries as were separated by natural barriersfrom what may be called the Semitic and Canaaniticregion such as lay in and beyond the highlands ofTaurus and Na'i'ri, i.e., in Asia Minor and the moun¬tain land between the Black and Caspian seas.2. Of these countries some had been only partlysubject to Assyria, like the kingdom of Van and theother principalities of Urartu on one hand, Ciliciaand Cappadocia on the other, while some had neverbeen subject to it at all, but only endangered by itsnearness; these were the countries of that advancedpart of Asia Minor, of which the course of the riveri86