Sardanapalus (1821) is a historical tragedy in blank verse by Lord Byron, set in ancient Nineveh and recounting the fall of the Assyrian monarchy and its supposed last king.

It has had an extensive influence on European culture, inspiring a painting by Delacroix and musical works by Berlioz, Liszt and Ravel, among others.

In a soliloquy Salemenes deplores the life of slothful luxury led by his brother-in-law Sardanapalus, king of Assyria.

Sardanapalus answers by extolling the virtues of mild and merciful rule and condemning bloodshed, but is finally persuaded to give Salemenes his signet so that he can arrest the rebel leaders.

The Chaldean astrologer Beleses predicts the downfall of Sardanapalus, then meets the satrap Arbaces and plots the king's murder with him.

Salemenes enters and tries forcibly to arrest both men, but Sardanapalus arrives unexpectedly and, not wanting to believe that Beleses and Arbaces could be traitors, breaks up the struggle.

it is The very policy of orient monarchs – Pardon and poison – favours and a sword – A distant voyage, and an eternal sleep […] How many satraps have I seen set out In his sire's day for mighty vice-royalties, Whose tombs are on their path!

Sardanapalus awakes from a troubled sleep and tells Myrrha that he has had a nightmare of banqueting with his dead ancestors, the kings of Assyria.

I thought to have made mine inoffensive rule An era of sweet peace 'midst bloody annals, A green spot amidst desert centuries, On which the future would turn back and smile, And cultivate, or sigh when it could not Recall Sardanapalus' golden reign.

Then he is told that the Euphrates, being in violent flood, has torn down part of the city wall, leaving no defence against the enemy except the river itself, which must presently recede.

[6] Setting out his principle that drama should be based on hard fact he commented on Sardanapalus and The Two Foscari that My object has been to dramatize like the Greeks (a modest phrase!)

The passage in which Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to admire his own appearance in armour was, on Byron's own evidence, suggested by Juvenal Satires, Bk.

[9] The character of Myrrha does not appear in any historical account of Sardanapalus, but the critic Ernest Hartley Coleridge noted a resemblance to Aspasia in Plutarch's life of Artaxerxes, and claimed that her name was probably inspired by Alfieri's tragedy Mirra, which Byron had seen in Bologna in 1819.

He also suggested that the style of Sardanapalus was influenced by Seneca the Younger, whose tragedies Byron certainly mentions browsing through just before he began work on it.

[12] Byron's Sardanapalus was one of the literary sources–others include Diodorus Siculus and the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus–of Eugène Delacroix' major historical painting La Mort de Sardanapale, completed between November 1827 and January 1828.

[12][22][23][24] In 1901 the Prix de Rome committee selected Fernand Beissier's Myrrha, a pale imitation of Sardanapalus, as the text to be set.