'6. The fame of .Solomon spread northward and east- ward to Persia. At Shiraz they showed the INIeder- Suleiman, or tomb of Hatii-sheba, said that Persepolis had been iniilt by the .linns at his connnand, and point- ed to the i'akht-i-Suleiman (Solomon's tlirone) in proof. Through their spells, too, he made iiis wonderful jour- ney, breakfasting at Persepolis, dining at Baalbek, and supping at Jerusalem (Chardin, iii, llj.i, 143; Ouseley, ii, 41, 437). Persian literature, while it had no single life of David, boasted of countless histories of Solomon ; one, the Siil>ii,i<iri-\,imi'Ji, in eighty books, ascribed to the |ioet Firdusi (D'llfrbelot, loc. ril. ; Chardin, iii, I'JX). Ill |K>|iular belii'f he was confounded with the great Persian hero Jemshid (Ouseley, ii, (i4).
4. .\s migiit be exfiected, the legends appeared in their coarsi-.ti ami Ijasest form in ICurope, hising all their ixietry, the mere appendages of the most detestable of Ajtocrypha, books of magic, a Hygromanteia, a Contra- dictio Sulomonis (whatever that may be) con<lemned by GelitiiuH, Incantationes, Clavicula, and the like. Two of iheiM' Htrange lj<Hik» have been reprinted in fac-simile by .ScheiJM'l (Kli>»ter, v). The Cliiiiciild Siiliimonis .S'vcmmtinlici consists of incantations made up of He- brew words; and the mightiest spell of the enchanter is the Sii/illnia .SV//<)//j<.;iw, engraved with Helirew cliar- aclerK, such an might havi' been handed down Ihrongh a long Huccesttion of Jewish exorcists. It is singular (unlesji thiH, Uh), waH part of the imposture) that both the b<HikN profesB to be puiilihhed with the special license of (MipeH .Inliiis II and Alexander VI. Was this ///c form of Hebrew literature which they were willing to en- courage'/ A plen-sant Persian apologue teaching a les- ion dewrven lo be res«'ued fn.in the mass .if fables. The king of Israel met one day the king of the anta, took
the insect on his hand, and held converse with it, ask- ing, CriA'sus-like, "Am not I the mightiest and most glorious of men'r"' "Not so," replied the ant-king. "Thou sittest on a throne of gold, but I make thy hand my throne, and thus am greater than thou" (Chardin, iii, 198). One pseudonymous work has a somewhat higher character, the Psulterium Salomonis, altogether without merit, a mere cento from the Psalms of David, but not otherwise offensive (Fabricius, i,917; Tregelles, I III roil, to the Xew Test. p. 154), and therefore attached sometimes, as in the great Alexandrian Codex, to the sacred volume. One strange story meets us from the omnivorous Note-book of Bede. Solomon did repent, and in his contrition he offered himself to the Sanhe- drim, doing penance, and they scourged him tive times with rods, and then he travelled in sackcloth through the cities of Israel, saying as he went, "Give alms to Solomon" (Bede, I)e Salom. ap. Pineda).
VII. Xew-Tesi(iment Vieius. — We pass from this wild farrago of Jewish and other fables to that which pre- sents the most entire contrast to them. The teaching of the New Test, adds nothing to the materials for a life of Solomon. It enables us to take the truest measure of it. The teaching of the Son of jNIan passes sentence on all that kingly pomp. It declares that in the hum- blest work of God, in the lilies of the field, there is a grace and beauty inexhaustible, so that even " Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Matt, vi, 29). It presents to us the perfect pattern of a growth in wisdom, like, and yet unlike, his, taking, in the eyes of men, a less varied range; but deeper, truer, purer, because united with purity, victory over temptation, self-sacrifice, the true large -heartedness of sympathy with all men. On the lowest view which serious think- ers have ever taken of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, they have owned that there was in him one "greater than Solomon" (xii, 42). The historical Son of David, ideally a tyjie of the Clirist that was to come, was in his actual life the most strangely contrasted. It was re- served for the true, the later. Son of David, to fulfil the prophetic yearnings which had gathered round the birth of the earlier. He was the true Shelomoh, the prince of peace, the true Jedid-jah, the well-beloved of the Father. (See De Pineda, De Rebus Salomonticis [Cologne, 1613, 1(586] ; Hess, Gesch. Salomons [Ziir. 1785J ; Miller, Lect- ures on Solomon [Lond. 1838].)
SOLOMON'S GAKDENS (Eccles. ii, 5). See Gar- den.
SOLO^ION'S POOLS (Eccles. ii, 6). Of the vari- ous pools inentioncd in Scrijiture, or usually regarded as such, porliaps tlie most celebrated are the Pools of Solomon in Wady Urtas, between Hebron and Bethle- hem, called by the Arabs el-Biirak, from which an ai|ucduct was carried which still supplies Jerusalem with water (Ecclus. xxiv, 30, 31). They are three in number, i)artly hewn out of the rock, and partly built with masonry, but all lined with cement, and formed on successive levels, with conduits leading from the up- per to the lower, and flights of steps from the top to the bottom of each (Sandys, Trav. p. 150). They are all formed in the sides of the valley of Etham, with a dam across its opening, which forms the east side of the low- est pool. Their dimensions are thus given bv Dr. Bob- inscm (/y/W. /r-cs-. i, 348, 374) : (1.) I'pper jiool : length 380 feet; breadth at the east 236 feet, at tlie west 229 feet ; depth at the east 25 feet; distance above the mid- dle pool KJO feet. (2.) Middle pool: length 423 feet; breadth at the east 250 feet, at the west 160 feet; depth 39 feel; distance above the lower pool 248 feet. (3.) Lower pool: length 582 feet; breadth at the east 207 feet, at the west 118 feet; depth ,50 feet. They appear to be sniiplied in part from a spring in the ground above (see Thomson, Litnd mid Book, i, 311), but they are ev- idently tilled mostly by surface-water in the rainy sea- son, as they drain the neighboring hill -sides. The aijueduct has two lines, an upper and a lower level; the