And now what was the writing? Daniel at the first glance had read that fiery quadrilateral of letters, looking like the twelve gems of the high priest's ephod with the mystic light gleaming upon them.
+----+----+----+ | M. | N. | A. | +----+----+----+ | M. | N. | A. | +----+----+----+ | T. | Q. | L. | +----+----+----+ | P. | R. | S. | +----+----+----+
Four names of weight.[442]
+-------------------+ | A Mina. | +-------------------+ | A Mina. | +-------------------+ | A Shekel. | +-------------------+ | A Half-mina.[443] | +-------------------+
What possible meaning could there be in that? Did it need an archangel's colossal hand, flashing forth upon a palace-wall to write the menace of doom, to have inscribed no more than the names of four coins or weights? No wonder that the Chaldeans could not interpret such writing!
It may be asked why they could not even _read_ it, since the words are evidently Aramaic, and Aramaic was the common language of trade. The Rabbis say that the words, instead of being written from right to left, were written κιονηδόν, "pillar-wise," as the Greeks called it, from above downwards: thus--
+---+---+---+--+ | פ | ת | מ | מ | +---+---+---+--+ | ר | ק | נ | נ | +---+---+---+--+ | ס | ל | א | א | +---+---+---+--+
Read from left to right, they would look like gibberish; read from above downwards, they became clear as far as the reading was concerned, though their interpretation might still be surpassingly enigmatic.
But words may stand for all sorts of mysterious meanings; and in the views of analogists--as those are called who not only believe in the mysterious force and fascination of words, but even in the physiological quality of sounds--they may hide awful indications under harmless vocables. Herein lay the secret.
A mina! a mina! Yes; but the names of the weights recall the word _m'nah_, "hath numbered": and "God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it."
A shekel! Yes; _t'qilta_: "Thou hast been weighed in a balance and found wanting."
_Peres_--a half-mina! Yes; but _p'rîsath_: "Thy kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians."[444]
At this point the story is very swiftly brought to a conclusion, for its essence has been already given. Daniel is clothed in scarlet, and ornamented with the chain of gold, and proclaimed triumvir.[445]
But the king's doom is sealed! "That night was Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, slain." His name meant, "Bel! preserve thou the king!" But Bel bowed down, and Nebo stooped, and gave no help to their votary.
"Evil things in robes of sorrow Assailed the monarch's high estate; Ah, woe is me! for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate! And all about his throne the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but an ill-remembered story Of the old time entombed."
"And Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old."
As there is no such person known as "Darius the Mede," the age assigned to him must be due either to some tradition about some other Darius, or to chronological calculations to which we no longer possess the key.[446]
He is called the son of _Achashverosh_, Ahasuerus (ix. 1), or Xerxes. The apologists have argued that--
1. Darius was Cyaxares II., father of Cyrus, on the authority of Xenophon's romance,[447] and Josephus's echo of it.[448] But the _Cyropædia_ is no authority, being, as Cicero said, a non-historic fiction written to describe an ideal kingdom.[449] History knows nothing of a Cyaxares II.
2. Darius was Astyages.[450] Not to mention other impossibilities which attach to this view, Astyages would have been far older than sixty-two at the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Cyrus had suppressed the Median dynasty altogether some years before he took Babylon.
3. Darius was the satrap Gobryas, who, so far as we know, only acted as governor for a few months. But he is represented on the contrary as an extremely absolute king, setting one hundred and twenty princes "over the whole kingdom," and issuing mandates to "all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth." Even if such an identification were admissible, it would not in the least save the historic accuracy of the writer. This "Darius the Mede" is ignored by history, and Cyrus is represented by the ancient records as having been the sole and undisputed king of Babylon from the time of his conquest.[451] "Darius the Mede" probably owes his existence to a literal understanding of the prophecies of Isaiah (xiii. 17) and Jeremiah (li. 11, 28).