Sardanapalus.
Sardanapalus. This prince surpassed all his predecessors in effeminacy, luxury, and cowardice.[1007] He never went out of his palace, but spent all his time amongst a company of women, dressed and painted like them, and employed like them at the distaff. He placed all his happiness and glory in the possession of immense treasures, in feasting and rioting, and indulging himself in all the most infamous and criminal pleasures. He ordered two verses to be put upon his tomb, which imported, that he carried away with him all that he had eaten, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, but left all the rest behind him.
Hæc habeo quæ edi, quæque exaturata libido
Hausit: at illa jacent multa et præclara relicta.[1008]
An epitaph, says Aristotle, fit for a hog.
Arbaces, governor of Media, having found means to get into the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio; enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subject to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy [pg 333] against him. Belesis, governor of Babylon, and several others, entered into it. On the first rumour of this revolt, the king hid himself in the inmost part of his palace. Being obliged afterwards to take the field with some forces which he had assembled, he at first gained three successive victories over the enemy, but was afterwards overcome, and pursued to the gates of Nineveh; wherein he shut himself, in hopes the rebels would never be able to take a city so well fortified, and stored with provisions for a considerable time: the siege proved indeed of very great length. It had been declared by an ancient oracle, that Nineveh could never be taken, unless the river became an enemy to the city. These words buoyed up Sardanapalus, because he looked upon the thing as impossible. But when he saw that the Tigris, by a violent inundation, had thrown down twenty stadia[1009] of the city wall, and by that means opened a passage to the enemy, he understood the meaning of the oracle, and thought himself lost.
A.M. 3257. Ant. J.C. 747.
He resolved, however, to die in such a manner, as, according to his opinion, should cover the infamy of his scandalous and effeminate life. He ordered a pile of wood to be made in his palace, and setting fire to it, burnt himself, his eunuchs, his women, and his treasures. Athenæus makes these treasures amount to a thousand myriads of talents of gold,[1010] and ten times as many talents of silver, which, without reckoning any thing else, is a sum that exceeds all credibility. A myriad contains ten thousand; and one single myriad of talents of silver is worth thirty millions of French money, or about one million four hundred thousand pounds sterling. A man is lost, if he attempts to sum up the whole value; which induces me to believe, that Athenæus must have very much exaggerated in his computation; however, we may be assured, from his account, that the treasures were immensely great.
Plutarch, in his second treatise,[1011] dedicated to the praise of Alexander the Great, wherein he examines in what the true greatness of princes consists, after having shown that it can arise from nothing but their own personal merit, confirms it by two very different examples, taken from the history of the Assyrians, in which we are now engaged. Semiramis and [pg 334] Sardanapalus (says he) both governed the same kingdom; both had the same people, the same extent of country, the same revenues, the same forces and number of troops; but they had not the same dispositions, nor the same views. Semiramis, raising herself above her sex, built magnificent cities, equipped fleets, armed legions, subdued neighbouring nations, penetrated into Arabia and Ethiopia, and carried her victorious arms to the extremities of Asia, spreading consternation and terror everywhere. Whereas Sardanapalus, as if he had entirely renounced his sex, spent all his time in the heart of his palace, perpetually surrounded with a company of women, whose dress and even manners he had adopted, applying himself with them to the spindle and the distaff, neither understanding nor doing any other thing than spinning, eating and drinking, and wallowing in all manner of infamous pleasure. Accordingly, a statue was erected to him, after his death, which represented him in the posture of a dancer, with an inscription upon it, in which he addressed himself to the spectator in these words: Eat, drink, and be merry; every thing else is nothing: an inscription very suitable to the epitaph he himself had ordered to be put upon his monument.[1012]
Plutarch in this place judges of Semiramis, as almost all the profane historians do of the glory of conquerors. But, if we would make a true judgment of things, was the unbounded ambition of that queen much less blamable, than the dissolute effeminacy of Sardanapalus? Which of the two vices did most mischief to mankind?