Sardanapalus

“ History, which glows at the sight of renowned and tragical events, languishes over peaceable reigns: and scarce mentions such sovereigns.
Sardanapalus ends this series of kings. Enemy to noise, disorder and war, he mispends his time, shuts himself up in his palace, and sinks into effeminacy. 103The women, thou seest about him, neither think nor exist but for him. His looks give them life, and he receives life from theirs. What do I say? He seeks himself with astonishment and finds himself not; a surfeit of pleasures destroys his taste: he does not live, but languish. ”

“ For this is what, I imagine, is meant by the brains of Jupiter and the king. On which account," continues he, "Sardanapalus was the most happy of all monarchs, who during his whole life preferred enjoyment to everything else, and who, even after his death, shows by his fingers, in the figure carved on his tomb, how much ridicule all human affairs deserve, being not worth the snap of his fingers which he makes . . . . . . . . anxiety about other things."
However, Sardanapalus does not appear to have lived all his life in entire inaction; for the inscription on his tomb says ”

“ SARDANAPALUS, or Sardanapallus, according to Greek fable, the last king of Assyria, the thirtieth in succession from Ninyas. The name is derived from that of Assur-danin-pal, the rebel son of Shalmaneser II., whose reign ended with the fall of Nineveh in 823 B.C. (or perhaps from that of Assur-dan III., the last king but one of the older Assyrian dynasty) ; his character is that ascribed to Assur-bani-pal. He was the most effeminate and corrupt of a line of effeminate princes; hence Arbaces, satrap of Media, rebelled and, with the help of Belesys, the Babylonian priest, besieged Nineveh. ”

“ A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: 'Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play; all other human joys are not worth a fillip.' Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so) , whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. ”

“ As one wanders through the narrow and squalid streets of modern Tarsus—a city of less than twenty thousand inhabitants—one finds no vestige whatever of its former splendor. But few ruins remain, the most conspicuous of which is the concrete foundation of a Roman structure popularly regarded as the tomb of the cynical voluptuary, Sardanapalus. No tradition indicates the house of the Apostle of the Gentiles or points to any church dedicated to his memory. The banks of the silt-filled Cydnus are lonely and desolate. ”

“ Whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities for commerce, extraordinary means must have been found for communities to flourish there; whence it may seem that the measures of Sardanapalus were directed by juster views than have been commonly ascribed to him. But that monarch having been the last of a dynasty ended by a revolution, obloquy on his memory would follow of course from the policy of his successors and their partisans. The inconsistency of traditions concerning Sardanapalus is striking in Diodorus's account of him."—Mitford's Greece, 1820, ix. ”

“ The other character in which we feel, and feel still more strongly, the influence of the young Countess, is Myrrha, the Greek female slave in Sardanapalus. Sardanapalus is the best of Byron's historical tragedies.—With careless contempt for his fellow-men and the world in general, the proud Sardanapalus has given himself up to voluptuous pleasures. Martial fame he despises; he cares not to win a great name by shedding the blood of thousands of unoffending human beings ”

“ Anchiale, which Colonel Leake thought the fort of Tarsus, like that city, claimed Sardanapalus as its founder. The legend was that Sardanapalus, the son of Anakyndaraxes, erected, in one day, the cities of Anchiale and Tarsus. No one, nowadays, accepts the verses given by Strabo, relating to this Sardanapalus and his deeds, as genuine, and Aristotle says the sentiments in them are fitter for the grave of an ox than for the tomb of a king (Cic. Tusc. Disput. v. 35) . An early writer, Amyntas, records what recent research has shown to be probably the truth, viz. ”

“ A battle took place in the plain: the rebels were defeated; they lost many men, and were pursued as far as the mountains, which lie at a distance of 70 stades from Nineveh; and when they came down a second time into the plain to battle, Sardanapalus drew out his army against them, and sent heralds to proclaim that he would give 200 talents of gold to the man who slew Arbaces the Mede; the man who brought him alive should receive double this sum, and in addition the satrapy of Media. The same promise was made to any one who should slay Belesys, or bring him alive. ”

“ Éliphas Lévi adds in a note that, according to Suidas, Cedrenus and the Chronicle of Alexandria it was Zoroaster himself who, seated in his palace, disappeared suddenly and by his own will, with all his secrets and all his riches, in a great peal of thunder. He explains that every king who exercised divine power passed for an incarnation of Zoroaster, and that Sardanapalus converted his pyre into an apotheosis. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to remind the modern reader that the Sardanapalus of history is an unverified if not an unverifiable personage. Diodorus the Sicilian, who was contemporary with Cicero, derived his knowledge of Assyrian history from the Persica of Ctesias of Cnidos, who was private physician at the court of Artaxerxes Mnemon (B.C. 405-359) , and is said to have had access to, and to have consulted, the "Persian authorities" (διφθέραι Βασιλικαὶ) . ”

“ Sardanapalus cries lilly-white-vinegar, and Heliogabalus bakes fritters, in the via appia of this metropolis; Lucius Æmilius Paulus is a bayliff’s follower, and the famous queen Thomyris proportions out the offals for Cerberus; Tarquin sweeps his den, and Romulus is a turnspit in Pluto’s kitchen; Artaxerxes is an under scullion, and Pompey the magnificent, a rag-man; Mark Anthony, that disputed his mistress at the price of the whole universe, goes now about with dancing-dogs, a monkey and a rope ”

“ The very city of his birth, Tarsus, is said to have been founded by Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, famed for his exploit at another place on the shore of this part of the Mediterranean. More authentic history however, refers its earliest foundation to Sardanapalus, king of Assyria, who built Tarsus and Anchialus in Cilicia, nine hundred years before Christ. Its origin is by others ascribed to Triptolemus with an Argive colony, who is represented on some medals as the founder. ”

“ Are left as dirt by me despised."
—The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, made English by G. Booth, of the City of Chester, Esquire, 1700, p. 65.
"Another king of the sort was Sardanapalus.... And so, when Arbaces, who was one of the generals under him, a Mede by birth, endeavoured to manage by the assistance of one of the eunuchs, whose name was Sparamizus, to see Sardanapalus: and when ... ”

“ But you, who are constantly making mention of this Archestratus, have made this entertainment full of intemperance; for what of all the things which could unduly excite men has this fine epic poet omitted?—he, the only imitator of the life of Sardanapalus the son of Anacyndaraxes, who, Aristotle says, is made more obscure still by adding the name of his father; on whose tomb, Chrysippus says, the following inscription was engraved:—
Knowing that you are mortal, feed your soul
On banquets and delights ”

“ It is a poetical conception which contrasts the simple character and force of the Median servant with the effeminate splendour of the sovereign of Assyria, and which places beside the former, to aid and support him, the astrology and cunning of the Babylonians. But by this contrast the Medo-Persian Epos obtained another advantage; the completion of the whole poem. A masculine woman, Semiramis, had founded the kingdom; an effeminate man brings it to ruin. Herodotus does not know the name of Sardanapalus. But the name was known to the Greeks ”

“ Our poet, fired with indignation at this sacrilegious infringement of the solemn rights of nature, gave utterance to his feelings in the work just mentioned, in which he dwells on the salutary influence over the living of their veneration for the dead; and proves the mischievous effects of that policy which would invade the sacredness of a sentiment so holy.—American Quarterly Review, Vol. xvi. page 76.
[2] Page 15. That stung the Sardanapalus of our land.
“Il Lombardo Sardanapalo.” The Prince Belgiojoso, severely satirized in Parini’s poem of “The Day.” ”

“ The iron spirit of the man held back dissolution itself until his will was accomplished. Groping and crawling, he reached at last the polished chute in the rock, cut there by the priests centuries before and worn smooth by the passing of thousands of Sardanians. ”

“ As soon as Phoebus-Apollo, standing in his quadriga, had gilded to saffron the summits of fertile Mount Tmolus with his rays, the good people of Sardes were all astir, going and coming, mounting or descending the marble stairways leading from the city to the waters of the Pactolus, that opulent river whose sands Midas filled with tiny sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. One would have supposed that each one of these good citizens was himself about to marry, so solemn and important was the demeanour of all. ”

“ The Edinburgh Review, July, 1849, in an article on Tyndale's Sardinia, says:
"The Sardonic smile, so celebrated in antiquity, baffles research much more than the intemperie, nor have modern physiologists thrown any light on the nature of the deleterious plant which produces it. The tradition at least seems still to survive in the country, and Mr. Tyndale adduces some evidence to show that the Ranunculus sceleratus was the herb to which these exaggerated qualities were ascribed. Some insular antiquaries have found a different solution of the ancient proverb. ”

“ The king of Sardinia is a worthless man, in whom nobody puts any trust so far as regards his heart or honor; but the stress of things seems likely to keep him on the right side. The little sovereigns blustered at first, then ran away affrighted when they found there was really a spirit risen at last within the charmed circle,—a spirit likely to defy, to transcend, the spells of haggard premiers and imbecile monarchs. ”

“ The Sardine or small Pilchard of the river Missisippi, is about three or four fingers in breadth, and between six and seven inches long; it is good and delicate. One year I salted about the quantity of forty pints of them, and all the French who eat of them acknowledged them to be Sardines from their flesh, their bones, and their taste. They appear only for a short season, and are caught by the natives, when swimming against the strongest current, with nets made for that purpose only. ”

“ Only man and his closest companions lingered. At the foot of the terraced hill of Hephaistos all of Sardanes that still lived were gathered—all, with the exception of Minos the king and his company on the hill of Latmos.
At the north end of the valley, with their backs to the last of the flaming hills and their faces towards the encroaching snows, the Sardanians pitched a great camp. Some few small houses that once had been those of the tillers of the fields, were occupied by the lords and their families. ”

“ I could make the matter easy for you.”
“In Sardinia!” cried Brandolaccio. “Istos Sardos! Devil take them and their lingo! We couldn’t live in such bad company.”
“Sardinia’s a country without resources,” added the theologian. “For my part, I despise the Sardinians. They keep mounted men to hunt their bandits. That’s a stigma on both the bandits and the country. [*] Out upon Sardinia, say I! The thing that astounds me, Signor della Rebbia, is that you, who are a man of taste and understanding, should not have taken to our life in the maquis, after having once tried it, as you did.” ”

“ Sanderson was a scoffer of [Pg 83] the most captivating and dangerous type can not be denied. She loved to ridicule uninteresting things and commonplace people; and doubtless this fact accounted for the dearth of friends answering to her own age. It was to unthinking youth that the flashing sarcasms and stinging flings at established usages and sacred traditions appeared the embodiment of brilliant repartee. In complete contradiction to her caustic beliefs, she seemed to the young the soul of sincerity, working ever the most unselfish conditions for their enjoyment. ”

“ I thank thee, Lord Hephaistos! Thou hast upheld thy servant."
Sardanians heard the words of their priest, and they believed. Nor were Sardanian nerves stout enough to withstand such a startling manifestation of the deity. With one accord the people broke from the hall like sheep, and the nobles fled from one platform. Even the sable-robed priests tarried not for another greeting from their god, but scurried away with the rest.
Only one man fled not. That was the great Prince Minos, now ruler of Sardanes. ”

“ Since, indeed, Aristotle remarks of a certain hero of Sardinia that he used to withhold the power of visions and dreams from such as resorted to his shrine for inspiration, it must lie at the will and caprice of the demons to take away as well as to confer the faculty of dreams ”