SIXTH CENTURY.

JUDEA.-536, End of the Captivity.-515, Second Temple built. (604, Nebuchadnezzar.-570, Loses his Reason.-538, BelshazASSYRIA zar-End of the Kingdom of Babylon.

and

PERSIA. 561, Cyrus elected King.—559, Aids Cyaxares.-538, Babylon taken.-529, Cambyses.-521, Darius.

EGYPT.-594, Apries.-569, Amasis.-525, Psammenitus, last native King.

GREECE.-594, Solon, Archon.-560, Pisistratus.-514, Harmodius and Aristogiton.

ROME. 578, Servius Tullius.-534, Tarquin II.-509, Consuls-Constitution of Rome.

CHINA.-550, Confucius born.

LITERATURE. THE SEVEN WISE MEN; Mimnermus, Thespis, Æsop, Theognis, Pythagoras, Anacreon.

DISCOVERIES.-Geographical Maps; Terrestrial Globes, by Anaximander.-560, Marble employed (at Athens) for Statues.-540, Monochord, Terrestrial Revolution by Pythagoras.-552, Corinthian Capital by Callimachus.-520, Sundials by Anaximenes of Miletus.

JUDEA.

IN 603, Jehoiakim, relying upon the support of the Egyptian monarch, revolted against Nebuchadnezzar, who immediately. sent an army into Judæa. He followed in person in 599, when he killed the king as a rebel, and threw his body into the fields unburied; thus fulfilling the prediction of Jeremiah, xxii. 19. Jehoiachin was then placed on the throne, from which he was dragged at the end of three months, and led captive to Babylon, together with more than 10,000 companions in misfortune, the strength and the hope of the nation. Ezekiel was now a second time carried away into bondage; Jeremiah remained behind to console, but in vain, the remnant of the people. Zedekiah, the uncle of the deposed prince, was chosen to fill his place, but he proved more wicked than his predecessors. In 590, being the ninth year of his reign, he revolted against Nebuchadnezzar, and refused to pay the tribute imposed by this conqueror. His alliance with Pharaoh-Hophra proved of no avail: the Egyptian ruler retired before the Assyrian army, which immediately blockaded Jerusalem. The denunciations of Jeremiah, which had filled the city with consternation, could not ward off the impending fate; and after the city had endured the worst calamities of hunger, it was taken in a night-attack,

and given up to fire and sword, 588 B. C. The degraded king, having seen his wives and children slain before his face, had his eyes put out, and in that miserable condition was sent to a foreign prison, to be a living testimony of the truth of prophecy. [Jerem. xxiv. 8; xxvii. 12. Ezekiel, xii. 13.] All the Jewish people were transported to Babylon, the poorest class alone being left to cultivate the land. During fifty-two years, the sacred metropolis remained in the state in which Nebuzar-adan had left it; that is, until it was rebuilt by the Jews who were allowed to return under the decree of Cyrus, 536.

SECOND TEMPLE.-In the first year of his reign, the Persian conqueror allowed a colony of Jews, under Zerubbabel, of the family of David, to return to the land of their forefathers, 536 B. C. They did not exceed 50,000, the more wealthy portion preferring to remain in tranquillity and ease in Babylon, where they had become very numerous. The building of the temple, which occupied many years, was violently opposed by the Samaritans, to whom the colony was a source of expense; but it was completed in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, 515.

The Babylonian captivity entirely cured the descendants of Jacob of their idolatrous propensities, and they never after swerved from the worship of the true God. From this period Hebrew ceased to be the spoken language of the nation, having been displaced by the Chaldee, varying little from it, and in which part of the Book of Daniel is written. This gradually changed into the Syro-Chaldaic, the Jewish tongue mentioned in the New Testament.

REMARKS. In examining the conduct of God towards his chosen people, we shall find continually fresh subjects of admiration. After having renewed to Abraham the promise which he had made to our general father Adam; after having announced to the holy patriarch, as the recompense of his faith and virtue, that from him and his son Isaac should one day be born that holy Being the expectation of his posterity and the Saviour of the World; after having multiplied the race of Israel, God selected from the tribe of Judah the house of Jesse, the father of David, as that from which the Messiah was to spring. In spite of the deplorable revolution which separated the ten rebel tribes from that of Judah; in spite of the backslidings of most of the kings who succeeded Rehoboam; in spite of the calamities which God inflicted upon them, and which seemed to threaten the complete extinction of their house, the family of David still survived on the throne, while that of Israel was continually occupied by new families, A still more admirable sight is that alternation of glory and humiliation, of rewards and punishments, the almost invariable accompaniments of the good or bad conduct of the monarch and people of Judah. Thus the proceedings of that Providence which, often with profound and secret views, is hidden

from our eyes, are made a continual proof of the watchfulness of God over his people, an ever-visible manifestation of his designs towards them and the surrounding nations, and the most striking demonstration of his sovereign power, wisdom, and justice.

MORDECAI AND ESTHER.-Ahasuerus, king of Persia (either Xerxes or Artaxerxes Longimanus), divorced his wife Vashti, and supplied her place by the pious and amiable Esther, niece of Mordecai the Jew. As the fortune and credit of the uncle increased, those of Haman the favourite and chief minister declined. He therefore meditated the total destruction of the Jewish nation; and their happy deliverance, by the firmness of Esther, is still yearly commemorated by the feast of Purim. Haman fell into the snare he had laid for his enemies, and was hung on the gibbet which he had prepared for Mordecai.

ASSYRIA.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR, 604-561 B. c.-This monarch's reign comprehends the most brilliant period of the Chaldæo-Babylonian empire. This golden head of the prophetic image conquered Palestine, Idumea, Ammon, and Moab, utterly destroyed the Syrian power, and subjugated Persia. He had already taken most of the Phoenician towns, when the Tyrians retired from their city on the mainland to the adjoining islet, on which their more modern capital was built. Among other changes, this people altered their form of government, and appointed judges in the place of a king. Egypt suffered next at the hand of the conqueror; he spread fire and sword from Palestine to the borders of Ethiopia. Returning to Babylon, he patronised the arts, commerce, and industry; and completed those masterpieces of gigantic architecture, which may with greater probability be attributed to him than to any of his ancestors. During his reign, Daniel prophesied, and acquired great renown by the interpretation of the king's dream, which the Chaldean astrologers could not explain. In accordance with the prediction, for seven years he was afflicted with hypochondriacal madness (lycanthropy); fancying himself transformed into an ox, he fed on grass in the manner of cattle. His reason returning to him, 563 B. c., he remounted the throne, when for a short time he became more powerful than ever; and dying after a reign of forty-three years, he was regarded by the Assyrians as one of the greatest of their kings. But EvilMerodach, his son, who was weak and tyrannical, soon rendered himself odious by his cruelty and debauchery. While regent

during his father's madness, he committed so many excesses, that the latter, on his recovery, was compelled to imprison him, although without any hope of his being corrected by such chastisement. He was not without some good qualities, and history records with pleasure one trait of humanity in him—he liberated Jehoiachin from the prison in which he had been confined thirty-seven years. Neriglissar ascended a throne which he had stained by the murder of his brother-in-law, 559. This warlike prince infused new vigour into the Assyrian monarchy. He subdued Hyrcania; carried his victorious arms into Syria and Arabia; and formed an alliance with Croesus against the rising power of Media. He fell in a battle which he waged with Cyrus, and was succeeded by his son, Laborasoarchad, 555, who was slain by his subjects after a reign of nine months. The royal line was restored in the person of Labynetus, known also as Nabonadius, Naboandel, and Belshazzar. While the king gave himself up to luxury and pleasure, his mother, the wise Nitocris, the true Semiramis, held the reins of government with a firm hand. By her management, Babylon was fortified against the attacks of the Medes, and an alliance renewed with the king of Lydia against the menacing progress of the Persian prince. They collected an army of 420,000 men, which was defeated at Thymbra, 545. About five years later, Babylon was invested by Cyrus, and taken by a remarkable stratagem, on that fatal night when the mysterious writing on the wall told that the "kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and Persians," fifty years after the destruction of Jerusalem.

The history of the last of the Babylonian kings is not without difficulty. The name of Belshazzar not occurring in profane history, it has been applied to many different sovereigns. Evil-Merodach, and not Neriglissar, is said to have fallen in battle against the Medes; and Belshazzar was his immediate successor. Hales disputes the statement which makes Babylon to have been taken by the Medes and Persians on the same night that Belshazzar was slain, and considers that he fell in a conspiracy; and that, on the death of his son Laborasoarchad, nine months after, the dynasty became extinct, and Darius the Mede (Cyaxares) peaceably succeeded. Nabonadius had been appointed viceroy; he revolted against Cyrus, 551, who, otherwise occupied, deferred until 536 his attack on Babylon, which he then took by a remarkable stratagem.

PERSIA.

CYRUS THE GREAT.-After the taking of Babylon, Cyaxares II. (Darius the Mede)* divided his vast states into a hundred

*Darius, in Hebrew Darawesh, is not a proper name, but, like Pharaoh, a title of dignity. It is derived from Dara, which in Persian signifies a king.

and twenty satrapies, and made them accountable to three ministers, of whom Daniel was one. The Persian and Median nobles, jealous of the elevation of a foreigner, endeavoured to destroy him by that plot which ended in his being thrown into the lions' den, and his miraculous deliverance from the fury of the hungry beasts. This striking testimony of Almighty power was followed by a decree, in which the monarch acknowledged the God of the prophet. This act was the precursor of the edict which his successor published in favour of the Jews, in the first year of his reign. Cyaxares died in 536, leaving all his dominions to his nephew Cyrus, who inherited about the same time the sceptre of his father Cambyses, king of Persia.

The first year of his reign was marked by the termination of the Jewish captivity, when Zerubbabel, as prince of Judah, returned to Palestine, accompanied with about 50,000 of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. Cyrus reigned seven years over all Asia, and died 530 B. c. His military and political career began about 560, when he first quitted Persia with the command of an army. Thus far the testimony of Scripture has been followed; the blanks remain to be filled up from the contradictory accounts of the Greek historians.

Astyages, the son and successor of Cyaxares I., king of the Medes, was an indolent, superstitious, and cruel prince. His grandson Cyrus, by his daughter Mandane, was ordered to be exposed, to prevent the fulfilment of an oracle; but the future monarch of Asia was, like another Paris or Edipus, preserved by the humanity of a shepherd. Arrived at maturity, he threw off the Median yoke and defeated Croesus, who had taken up arms in behalf of the dethroned prince. He afterwards made rapid conquests in Upper Asia, and took Babylon after a siege of two years, by turning the current of the river, and entering by its exhausted channel.* Previously to his marching against the Scythians, he nominated his son Cambyses to succeed him, and admitted him to a share of the regal power. After a few partial successes, he perished in battle, and his dead body was mutilated by order of the Scythian queen, Tomyris.

* The walls of Babylon were 87 feet broad, 350 feet high, and 60 miles in circumference. To reconcile the accounts of sacred and profane history of the foundation and improvement of this wonder of the world, we may suppose that it was founded by Nimrod and enlarged by Belus; that Semiramis improved and adorned it with beautiful buildings; and that Nebuchadnezzar the Great raised it to its latter state of astonishing magnificence.