The Side Products of Absolute Power

As many classmates mentioned previously in their response papers, the images of the emperors of Assyria described in the book appeared to be drastically different from that of King Hammurabi. King Hammurabi was depicted to be a very benevolent and considerate king that truly loved his people, while the Assyrian kings were seen as terrifying dictators that used all kinds of means to control their subjects. The Assyrian kings obviously believed that rigorous rules and harsh punishments would help maintain their empires forever; but they made a mistake by neglecting all the negative effects caused by their ruling.

First of all, they focused too much on keeping the society in order that the economy did not get a chance to prosper. The Assyrian kings, unlike Hammurabi, did not want to preserve the culture and lifestyle of the conquered lands. Instead, they applied strict rule to make sure they would stay as a part of their great empire forever. They used the fear method to make people be afraid of the king and therefore follow the rules closely. On the other hand, the Assyrian kings utilized their army to an extreme. Most of their empire was expanded through militaristic means. This explained the fact that, despite of their unpopularity, the Assyrian empire still expanded to far corners of the Middle East. But as I mentioned, the economic aspect of the empire slacked off, partly because people did not have the incentives to gain extra, since they were too busy keeping themselves alive; also because the rigorous rules did not allow much economic activities going on.

The other side effect is the dissatisfaction of the Assyrian people. History has proven that, the more cruel the ruling, the more rebellious the people. Even though the kings did everything to make sure that people would stay under control, it is not hard to imagine that, eventually people would run out of patience and they would sum up their courage to rebel. The downfall of such an empire is inevitable, because its theory is ultimately against human nature.

Though the quick downfall of the Assyrian empire is reasonable because of its false way of ruling, the Hammurabi’s reign, despite his relatively benign ruling, didn’t last for that long either. It’s hard to explain why that is, maybe it’s just that absolute power, no matter what way it is approached, is not an effective way of ruling altogether.