A Companion to Assyria, First Edition. Edited by Eckart Frahm. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Assyria in Classical Sources Robert Rollinger CHAPTER 30 There are in Assyria many other great cities; but the most famous and the strongest is Babylon, where the royal dwelling had been set after the destruction of Ninus. (Herodotus 1.178.1, Godley, Loeb) Assyria’s Changing Image in Greek and Roman Texts The first attestations of Assyria in classical sources appear only after the downfall of the Neo‐ Assyrian Empire. Since the authenticity of a fragment by Phocylides (fr. 4 Gentili–Prato), a poet living presumably during the sixth century BCE, remains doubtful (Korenjak and Rollinger 2001), the earliest classical source dealing with Assyria are the Histories of Herodotus, published in the 420 s BCE (Bichler and Rollinger, 2nd edition, 2011; see also Bichler 2000; Rollinger 2003b). Though we know that the Greeks were in contact with the Neo‐Assyrian empire from at least the eighth century BCE onwards (see Chapter 14), only three hundred years later Assyria and Babylonia were, astonishingly, no longer clearly distin- guished from each other in Greek texts. According to Herodotus, the Assyrian empire had two royal residences. The most ancient one was Ninus, which was located on the Tigris River (see Hdt. 1.193.2; 2.150.3). After its destruction, Babylon became the seat of Assyrian king- ship, where Assyrian kings were allegedly engaged in building activities that focused on city walls and sanctuaries (Hdt. 1.184). Concerning Assyria’s history, Herodotus’s account remains very sketchy. Yet, he developed a far‐reaching concept that would become a defini- tive part of all world histories, at least until the 18th century CE (Rollinger 2003a; Wiesehöfer 2003, 2005). According to this concept, world history is structured by a succession of empires; Assyria is the first of these, followed by the Median and Persian empires. The Assyrian empire is characterized by its longevity: it ruled over Western Asia for 520 years (1.95.2; see Bichler 2000: 136). But Herodotus has only very little information about the history of these five centuries. Aside from Ninus, the son of Belus, who remains a mythic figure, only two Assyrian kings are mentioned. The first, Sardanapallus, is mentioned in the