Sardanapalus

Sardanapalus (also spelled Sardanapallus) was, according to the Greek writer Ctesias of Cnidus, the last king of Assyria. Ctesias' "Persica" is lost, but we know of its contents by later compilations and from the work of Diodorus (II.27). Sardanapalus has often been identified with the Assyrian king Aššurbanipal, [cite web
url = http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/justin/english/trans1.html
title = Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus
author = Marcus Junianus Justinus
format = HTML
quote = His successors too, following his example, gave answers to their people through their ministers. The Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire thirteen hundred years. The last king that reigned over them was Sardanapalus, a man more effeminate than a woman.] but his death in the flames of his palace recall the fate of Aššurbanipal's brother Šamaš-sum-ukkin.Fact|date=October 2007 The Greek writer Choerilus of Iasus composed an epitaph on Sardanapalus, said to have been translated from the Chaldean (quoted in Athenaeus, [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literature-idx?type=goto&id=Literature.AthV2&isize=XL&page=531 viii. p. 336] ).

The death of Sardanapalus was the subject of an Romantic Period painting by the 19th century French painter Eugene Delacroix, "The Death of Sardanapalus", which was itself based on the 1821 play "Sardanapalus" by Byron, which in turn was based on Diodorus. E. H. Coleridge, in his notes on the works of Byron, states, "It is hardly necessary to remind the modern reader that the Sardanapalus of history is an unverified if not an unverifiable personage.... The character which Ctesias depicted or invented, an effeminate debauchee, sunk in luxury and sloth, who at the last was driven to take up arms, and, after a prolonged but ineffectual resistance, avoided capture by suicide, cannot be identified."

ee also

*Dionysus Sardanapalus, a sculpture of Dionysus erroneously named after the king

External links

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=agd-eLVNRMMC&printsec=titlepage#PPA119,M1 The text of the Diodorus passage]
* [http://engphil.astate.edu/gallery/sardan.html Text of Byron's "Sardanapalus"]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=UKcDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA3&dq=Sardanapalus#PPA1,M1 Another text of the play]

References