Sardanapalus returned to Nineveh to defend his capital, while his army was placed under the command of his brother-in-law, who was soon defeated and killed.
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The actual Fall of Nineveh occurred in 612 BC after Assyria had been greatly weakened by a bitter series of internal civil wars between rival claimants to the throne.
Death of Sardanapalus is based on the tale of Sardanapalus, the last king of Assyria, from the historical library of Diodorus Siculus, the ancient Greek historian, and is a work of the era of Romanticism.
In Oliver Stone's biopic Alexander (2004), Dionysus is shown on-screen as bearded, longhaired, crowned with ivy, and draped in a lion skin and voluminous chiton, in a variation on this "Sardanapalus" statue type.