hnving given it the new name of Gutium. After this he seem& to have directe,l hi~- march against Crmsus, and subdued LydiB. Then in the year B,o. 638 he turned his- arms towards Babylonia. Nabnnahid now commanded the army in pereon, and sue- tained a defeat at Borsippa, and fled. Gobryas hurried forward to Babylon, the gates of the citRdel Eseakkil were thrown open to him, and when the morning broke the shields of Gntium were seen on the \\'alls of Essakkil. On the third Marchcswan (approximately October) Cyrus entered Babylon in peace, and on the eleventh of the SRme month was Belshezzar slain by Gobryas. Gobryas, appointed Governor of B11by- lonia, appoints governors to all the petty kingships of Babyknia, and these, we already know, were numerous. We have elsewhere indicated our belief that Gobryae-ie- Darius the Mede. We cannot rell how long his rule lasted, Cyrus was succeeded by Cambyses, and he by the usurper Smerdis the Mede. Darius Hystaspis wrested the throne from him, and was succeeded by Xerxes, who appears to be the Persian monarch that stirs up all his wealth against the realm of· Grecia. Then the record omits all mention of the successive Persian monarchs till Da.rius Codomannus, who bad to bear the shock of the assault of Alexander the Great. Alexander assigned, as the reason of his invasion of Persia, the fact that Xerxes had invaded Greece. There are few parts of ancient history better known than the campaigns of Alexander the Great. Left by the murder of his father in possession of Macedon, this yonth of twenty conquered in two years the whole Balkan Penimmla, In B.C. 334 he crossed the Bellespont, conquered South-Western Asia to beyond the Indus, Egypt, and Cyrene, and then at thirty-three died. No conqueror ever left, in 80 short a life, 80 deep an impress on the world. Wherever he had carried his arms, there for centuries after Greek influences flourished. The continuance of the Greek- Ba.ctria.n kingdom, for centuries after it was cut off to a great extent from intercourse- with the W £St, is evidence of the impress me.de by Alexander on a.11 with whom he ea.me in contact. The narrative in Josephus of Alexander visiting Jerusalem is by no means incredible; its accuracy would never have been questioned had it not been- conjoined with the statement that Jaddua the high priest showed Alexander tbe- prophecy of Daniel concerning him. The synchronism of Jaddua, with Alexander is only proved by Josephus's statement, and that is used to prove the late date of Chronicles, but the rest of the narrative, which proves the early date of Daniel, is, dismissed as unworthy of credit. This is a.n instance of the unconscious dishonesty of biassed intellects, who will admit anything rather than that a. prophet ever foretold, Such a hies makes all the judgments of the critical school, where prophecy is involved,. liable to suspicion. However, we would not press this narrative, as it is destitute of direct support. Alexander certainly gave privileges to the Jews, and the process of Hellenization began then that continued under the La.gids. After the death of Alexander, his empire was scrambled for by his different generals. A divkion a.t last was made which was fairly permanent-the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria., and Egypt. Of these by far the largest was Syria, which on several occasions embraced the grrater part of Asia Minor and a. portion of the Balkan Peninsula. Egypt ea.me next, which embraced, besides Egypt proper, Palestine, Ca:lo-Syria, Phcenicia., and Cyprus. Not only were these two last the most powerful, but they were most in contact with the Jews. Each was ruled by one dynasty from the days of Alexander-Egypt by the Lagids, and Syria by the Seleucids, and their wars and rivalries fill up very much the annals of the Die.dochi, This is evidenced by the eleventh (interpolated) chapter of Daniel, There is an a.dditione.l interest for us in the history of the Beleucids, the monarchs of Syria, in the fact that from them sprang Antic,chus Epiphanes, whose persecutions- THE BOOK OF DANIEL. xxix
and Lhe revolt of the Jews against them left such a trace on Jewish history. Palestine nnd Cerio-Syria remained for a century in the power of the Lagids of Egypt, who seem on the whole to have been liked by the Jews. It w:is wrested from them by Antiochus the Great, the father of Epiphanes. Epipha11e8, as a hostage in Rome, ]u1d imbibed a wholesome respect for the power of the great republic. With brilliant military talent, as manifested by hie Egyptian campaigns, and with some genius for finesse in politics, he was incapable of estimating the power of religious fervour. Hi8 residence in Ilome, and his licentious life, had made him incapable of real religious ,faith, so it seemed to him an easy matter to coerce the Jews into abandoning the faith of their fathers. Had he read their earlier history, he would have found what would have encouraged him in his belief. The people were, in the days before the Captivity, .always prone to tum from the worship of Jehovah to the worship of idols. The per- secution of the Jews by Antiochus is-if we except the efforts of Jezebel and Manasseh, of which we have no particulars-the earliest recorded persecution for religion, the first great experiment of compelling men by force to believe according to orders from their political superiors. It seems to us difficult to explain the different attitude of the Jewish people to the worship of Jehovah before and after the Captivity save as the .result of miracles of o. sort not unlike those related in Daniel. The zeal of Mattathias and the valour of his sons at length wrung from the Seleucids the independence of Palestine. The Maccabean rulers fell finally under the al!- ,conquering power of Rome. Then came the tragedy of Calvary, when the Messiah promised to the fathers was cut off, when the Jewish people threw away their hope and glory, and brought down on their own heads and on those of their chiluren the curse of innocent blood. And in little more than a generation the curse did fall on them. Jerusalem was compassed with armies, the eagle standards of Rome were gathered together, and Jerusalem became heaps. How far the history may stretch beyond this--to the division of the empire into East and West-to the rise of the European kingdoms, away even to the future date when these too will fall under the power of the Messianic empire, we do not intend to inquire. It was necessary to dwell at greater length on the background, actual -0r assumed, of the book, and next on the period of Epiphanes, as it is the time whe!I. critics have determined that Daniel was written.