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Mobarsapes, the Adiabenian monarch, had set his hopes on keeping the invader out of his kingdom by defending the line of the Tigris, and when that was forced he seems to have despaired, and to have made no further effort. His towns and strongholds were taken one after another, without their offering any serious resistance. Nineveh, Arbela, and Gaugamala fell into the enemy's hands.
Archaeologists have located the "Fount of the Virgin," and the rock from which the infuriated inhabitants attempted to hurl Christ. They are looking for the House of Amran, the father of Moses, where the great leader was born. The site of Arbela, where Alexander the Great won his mightiest victory over Darius, has been discovered.
Instead of confining his servile march to the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, he resolved to imitate the adventurous spirit of Alexander, and boldly to advance into the inland provinces, till he forced his rival to contend with him, perhaps in the plains of Arbela, for the empire of Asia.
Seeing this, and regarding the battle as lost, since his line was broken, his centre and left wing defeated, while only his right wing remained firm, the Persian monarch yielded to his alarm, and hastily quitting the field, made his way to Arbela. The centre and left fled with him. The right, which was under the command of the Syrian satrap, Mazseus, made a firmer stand.
"Alexander deserves the glory which he has enjoyed for so many centuries and among all nations; but what if he had been beaten at Arbela having the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the deserts in his rear, without any strong places of refuge, nine hundred leagues from Macedonia?"
At one time he enumerates Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela; at another he prefers different combinations of these gods. Ashurbanabal is more consistent than most of the Assyrian rulers, and furnishes at the same time the best list.
Darius had crossed it, and had ridden on through Arbela without halting. Alexander reached that city on the next day, and made himself master of all Darius's treasure and stores; but the Persian king unfortunately for himself, had fled too fast for his conqueror: he had only escaped to perish by the treachery of his Bactrian satrap, Bessus.
Still, an element of love also enters into the relationship with her subjects. As a goddess of war she is of course 'perfect in courage, as Shalmaneser II. declares. Temples are erected to her in the city of Ashur, in Nineveh and Arbela.
What is most remarkable in the Assyrian worship of Ishtar is the local character assigned to her. The Ishtar of Nineveh is distinguished from the Ishtar of Arbela, and both from the Ishtar of Babylon, separate addresses being made to them in one and the same invocation.
In the case of Hannibal it was the battle of Cannæ, in that of Alexander the battle of Arbela. Cæsar's great conflict was at Pharsalia, Napoleon's at Waterloo. Marathon was, in some respects, Darius's Waterloo. The place is a beautiful plain, about twelve miles north of the great city of Athens.
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