BABYLON AND PERSIA

LYDIA AND ASIA MINOR * 1 87Halys (the modern Kizil-Irmak), according toHerodotus' just remark, almost makes an island.For, it is very certain that the Assyrians never sawthe Mge&n Sea (that part of the Mediterraneanwhich flows amidst the Greek islands and along theIonian shores) any more than the Black Sea. Andif Lydia, at a moment of sore distress, exchanged herindependence against Assyrian protection, the sub¬mission was only temporary and almost immediatelyreiDcnted of.*3. We saw that soon after that passing triumph,Asshurbanipal became too much engrossed withvital struggles nearer homeagainst Chaldean Baby¬lon and Elam and the advancing Medes to repressthe risings of his outlying subjects and vassals.Much less were his feeble successors able to attendto any thing but their mo.st immediate interests, andwhile the Scythian invasion was acting on the totter¬ing empire as an earthquake on an already ruinousbuilding, changes were taking place in and beyondits northern boundaries, which it is impossible "totrace in those unrecorded years, but which we findaccomplished when the darkness is lifted and somedegree of order restored. Thus we hear no moreof Urartu. It is certain that, in the course of theseventh century B.C., the Hittite Alarodians weresupplanted by that Thraco-Phrygian branch of theAryan race, which is represented in the enumerationof the Japhetic family given in Chapter X. of Gen¬esis, as Togarmah, son of G6mer,t and has beenfamiliar under the name of Armenians ever since* See "Story of Assyria," pp. 37S-382. \Ibid., pp. 367; 368.