But Asshur-bani-pal was jealous of his rights, and careful not to allow any of them to lapse by disuse.  He let his displeasure be known at the court of Yakinlu, and very shortly received an embassy of submission.  Like Baal, Yakinlu sent a daughter to take her place among the great king’s secondary wives, and with her he sent a large sum of money, in the disguise of a dowry.[14175] The tokens of subjection were accepted, and Yakinlu was allowed to continue king of Arvad.  When, not long afterwards, he died,[14176] and his ten sons sought the court of Nineveh to prefer their claims to the succession, they were received with favour.  Azi-Baal, the eldest, was appointed to the vacant kingdom, while his nine brothers were presented by Asshur-bani-pal with “costly clothing, and rings."[14177]

Two other revolts of two other Phoenician towns belong to a somewhat later period.  On his return from an expedition against Arabia, about B.C. 645, Asshur-bani-pal found that Hosah, a small place in the vicinity of Tyre,[14178] and Accho, famous as Acre in later times, had risen in revolt against their Assyrian governors, refused their tribute, and asserted independence.[14179] He at once besieged, and soon captured, Hosah.  The leaders of the rebellion he put to death; the plunder of the town, including the images of its gods, and the bulk of its population, he carried off into Assyria.  The people of Accho, he says, he “quieted.”  It is a common practice of conquerors “to make a solitude and call it peace.”  Asshur-bani-pal appears to have punished Accho, first by a wholesale massacre, and then by the deportation of all its remaining inhabitants.

It is evident from this continual series of revolts and rebellions that, however mild had been the sway of Assyria over her Phoenician subjects in the earlier times, it had by degrees become a hateful and a grinding tyranny.  Commercial states, bent upon the accumulation of wealth, do not without grave cause take up arms and affront the perils of war, much less do so when their common sense must tell them that success is almost absolutely hopeless, and that failure will bring about their destruction.  The Assyrians were a hard race.  Such tenderness as they ever showed to any subject people was, we may be sure, in every case dictated by policy.  While their power was unsettled, while they feared revolts, and were uncertain as to their consequences, their attitude towards their dependents was conciliating.  When they became fully conscious of the immense preponderance of power which they wielded, and of the inability of the petty states of Asia to combine against them in any firm league, they grew careless and confident, reckless of giving offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions, more domineering, more oppressive.  Prudence should perhaps have counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant, to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people had still a rough honesty