turned the course of the arm of the Nile within which the Athenians lay, by several canals, and by that means opened a passage for their whole army to enter the island. Inarus seeing that all was lost, capitulated with Megabyzus for himself, for all his Egyptians, and about fifty Athenians, and surrendered on condition that their lives should be spared. The remainder of the auxiliary forces, which formed a body of six thousand men, resolved to hold out longer; and for this purpose they set fire to their ships, and drawing up in order of battle, resolved to die sword in hand, and sell their lives as dear as they could, in imitation of the Lacedæmonians, who refused to yield, and were all cut to pieces at Thermopyla. The Persians, hearing that they had taken so desperate a resolution, did not think it adviseable to attack them. A peace was therefore offered them, with a promise that they should all be permitted to leave Egypt, and have free passage to their native country either by sea or land. They accepted the conditions, put the conquerors in possession of Biblos and of the whole island, and went by sea to Cyrene, where they embarked for Greece: but most of the soldiers who had served in this expedition perished in it.

This was not the only loss the Athenians sustained on this occasion. Another fleet of fifty ships, which they sent to the aid of their besieged countrymen, sailed up one of the arms of the Nile, just after the Athenians had surrendered, not knowing what had happened. The instant they entered, the Persian fleet which kept out at sea, followed them, and attacked their rear, while the army discharged showers of darts upon them from the banks of the river. Thus only a few ships escaped, which opened themselves a way through the enemy's fleet, and all the rest were lost. Here ended the fatal war carried on by the Athenians for six years in Egypt, which kingdom was now again united to the Persian empire, and continued so during the rest of the reign of Artaxerxes, who had now been on the throne twenty years." *But the prisoners who were taken in this war met with the most unhappy fate.

SECTION V.-INARUS IS Delivered up to the king's MOTHER. THE AFFLICTION AND REVOLT OF MEGABYZUS.

ARTAXERXES, after refusing to gratify the request of his mother, who for five years together had been daily importuning him to put Inarus and his Athenians into her hands, in order that she might sacrifice them to the manes of Achæmenes her son, at last yielded to her solicitations. But how blind, how barbarously weak, must this king have been, to break through the most solemn engagements merely through complaisance; who, deaf to remorse, violated the law of nations, solely to avoid offending a most unjust mother! This inhuman princess, without regard to the faith of the treaty, caused Inarus to be crucified, and beheaded all the rest. Megabyzus was in the deepest affliction on that account; for as he had promised that no injury should be done them, the affront reflected principally on him. He therefore left the court and withdrew to Syria, of which he was governor; and his discontent was so great that he raised an army, and revolted openly.

The king sent Osiris, who was one of the greatest lords of the court, against him, with an army of two hundred thousand men. Megabyzus engaged Ösiris, wounded him, took him prisoner, and put his army to flight. Artaxerxes sending to demand Osiris, Megaby zus generously dismissed him, as soon as his wounds were cured.§

The next year Artaxerxes sent another army against him, the command of which he gave to Menostanes, son to Artarius the king's brother, and governor of Babylon. This general was not more fortunate than the former. He also was defeated and put to flight, and Megaby zus gained as signal a victory as the former.

A. M. 3550. Ant. J. C. 454. Thucyd. 1. i. p. 72.

¡ A. M. 3557.

† A. M. 3556. Ant. J. C. 443. Ctes. c. 35-40. Ant. J. C. 477. A. M. 3553. Ant. J. C. 446.

Artaxerxes, finding he could not reduce him by force of arms, sent his brother Artarius and Amytis his sister, who was the wife of Megabyzus, with several other persons of the first quality, to persuade the latter to return to his allegiance. They succeeded in their negotiation; the king pardoned him, and

he returned to the court.

One day as they were hunting, a lion, raising himself on his hinder feet, was going to rush upon the king, when Megabyzus, seeing the danger he was in, and fired with zeal and affection for his sovereign, hurled a dart at the lion, which killed him. But Artaxerxes, upon pretence that he had affronted him, in darting at the lion before him, commanded Megabyzus's head to be struck off. Amytis the king's sister, and Amestris his mother, with the greatest difficulty prevailed upon the king to change this sentence into perpetual banishment. Megabyzus was therefore sent to Cyrta, a city on the Red Sea, and condemned to end his days there; however, five years after, disguising himself like a leper, he made his escape and returned to Susa, where, by the assistance of his wife and mother-in-law, he was restored to favour, and continued so till his death, which happened some years after, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Megaby zus was extremely regretted by the king and the whole court. He was a man of the greatest abilities in the kingdom, and at the same time the best general. Artaxerxes owed both his crown and life to him: but it is of dangerous consequence for a subject, when his sovereign is under too many obligations to him.* This was the cause of all the misfortunes of Magabyzus. It is surprising that so judicious a prince as Artaxerxes should have been so imprudent, as to be fired with jealousy against a nobleman of his court, merely because, in a party of hunting, he had wounded the beast they were pursuing before him. Could any thing be so weak? Was this worthy of being considered the point of honour by a king? History, however, furnishes us with many instances of this kind. I am inclined to believe from some expressions of Plutarch, that Artaxerxes was ashamed of the wild fury to which this false delicacy had raised him, and that he made some public kind of atonement for it: for, according to this author, he published a decree, importing, that any man who was hunting with the king, should be allowed to throw his javelin first at the beast, if opportunity should offer; and he, according to Plutarch, was the first Persian monarch who granted such a permission.†

SECTION VI.-ARTAXERXES SENDS ESDRAS, AND AFTERWARDS NEHEMIAH, TO JERUSALEM.

BEFORE I proceed in the history of the Persians and Greeks, I shall relate, in few words, what events happened among the people of God, during the first twenty years of Artaxerxes, which is an essential part of the history of that prince.

In the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes, Esdras obtained of the king and his seven counsellors an ample commission, empowering him to return to Jerusalem with all such Jews as would follow him thither, in order to settle the Jewish government and religion agreeably to their own laws. Esdras was descended from Saraia, who was high-priest of Jerusalem when it was destroyed by Nebuchodonosor, and was put to death by his command. Esdras was a very learned and pious man, and was chiefly distinguished from the rest of the Jews by his great knowledge in the Scriptures; it being said of him, "that he was very ready in the law of Moses that was given by the God of Israel."§ He now set out from Babylon with the gifts and offerings which the king, his courtiers, and such Israelites as had staid in Babylon, had put into his hands for the service of the temple, and which he gave to the priests upon his arrival at Jerusalem. It appears by the commission which Artaxerxes gave him, that

* Beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse: ubi multum antevertêre, pro gratia odium redditur-Tacit. Annal. 1. iv. c. 18. Plot. in Apoph. p. 173. A. M. 3537. Ant. J. C. 467. Esdras, vii. &c.

1 Esdras, viii. 3.

this prince had a high veneration for the God of Israel, as, in commanding his officers to furnish the Jews with all things necessary for their worship, he adds, "let all things be performed after the law of God diligently, unto the Most High God, that wrath come not upon the kingdom of the king and his son.' This commission, as I observed, empowered him to settle the religion and government of the Jews pursuant to the laws of Moses; to appoint magistrates and judges to punish evil-doers, not only by imprisoning their persons, and confiscating their possessions, but also by sending them into banishment, and even sentencing them to death, according to the crimes they should commit. Such was the power with which Esdras was invested, and which he exercised faithfully during thirteen years, till Nehemiah brought a new commission from the Persian court.

Nehemiah was also a Jew of distinguished merit and piety, and one of the cupbearers to king Artaxerxes. This was a very considerable employment in the Persian court, because of the privileges annexed to it, víz. of being often near the king's person, and of being allowed to speak to him in the most favourable moments. However, neither his exalted station, nor the settlement of his family in that land of captivity, could obliterate from his mind the country of his ancestors, nor their religion: neither his love for the one, nor his zeal for the other, were abated; and his heart was still in Zion. Some Jews who were come from Jerusalem, having informed him of the sad state of that city, that its walls lay in ruin, its gates were burnt down, and the inhabitants thereby exposed to the insults of their enemies, and made the scorn of all their neighbours; the affliction of his brethren, and the dangers with which they were menaced, made such an impression on his mind, as might naturally be expected from one of his piety. One day, as he was waiting upon the king, the latter observing an unusual air of melancholy in Nehemiah's countenance, asked him the cause of it; a proof that this monarch had a tenderness of heart rarely found in kings, and which is nevertheless much more valuable than the most shining qualities. Nehemiah took this opportunity to acquaint him with the calamitous state of his country; owned that that was the subject of his grief; and humbly intreated that leave might be given him to go to Jerusalem, in order to repair the fortifications of it. The kings of Persia, his predecessors, had permitted the Jews to rebuild the temple, but not the walls of Jerusalem. But Artaxerxes immediately decreed, that the walls and gates of Jerusalem should be rebuilt; and Nehemiah, as governor of Judea, was appointed to put this decree in execution. The king, to do him the greater honour, ordered a body of horse, commanded by a considerable officer, to escort him thither. He likewise wrote to the governors of the provinces on this side the Euphrates, to give him all the assistance possible in forwarding the work for which he was sent. This pious Jew executed every part of his commission with incredible zeal and activity.

It is from this decree, enacted by Artaxerxes in the twentieth year of his reign, for the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, that we date the beginning of the seventy weeks mentioned in the famous prophecy of Daniel, after which the Messiah was to appear, and to be put to death. I shall here insert the whole prophecy, but without giving the explication of it, as it may be found in other writers, and is not a part of this history.

"Thou art greatly beloved, therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sin, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand, THAT FROM THE GOING FORTH OF THE COMMANDMENT, TO RESTORE AND TO BUILD JERUSALEM, unto the Messiah the prince, shall be seven † A. M. 3550. Ant. J. C. 454. Nehem. c. i. et ii. 1 Dan. ix. 23-27

Esdras, viii. S. ver. 21.

110

weeks; and threescore and two weeks the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall be with a flood and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations, he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined, shall be poured upon the desolate."*

When Esdras was in power, as his chief view was to restore religion to its ancient purity, he disposed the books of Scripture into their proper order, revised them all very carefully, and collected the incidents relating to the people of God in ancient times; in order to compose out of them the books of the Chronicles, to which he added the history of his own times, which was finished by Nehemiah. With their books ends the long history which Moses had begun, and which the writers who came after him continued in a direct series, till the repairing of Jerusalem. The rest of the sacred history is not written in that uninterrupted order. While Esdras and Nehemiah were compiling the latter part of that great work, Herodotus, whom profane authors call the Father of History, began to write. Thus we find that the latest authors of the books of Scripture flourished about the same time with the first authors of the Grecian history; and when it began, that of God's people, to compute only from Abraham, included already fifteen centuries. Herodotus makes no mention of the Jews in his history; for the Greeks desired to be informed of such nations only as were famous for their wars, their commerce, and grandeur; so that, as Judea was then but just rising from its ruins, it did not excite the attention of that people.† SECTION VII.-CHARACTER OF PERICLES, &c.

I NOW return to Greece. From the banishment of Themistocles, and the death of Aristides, the exact time of which is not known, two citizens, Cimon and Pericles, enjoyed all the influence and authority in Athens. Pericles was much younger than Cimon and of a quite different character. As he will make a very considerable figure in the following history, it is of importance to the reader to know who he was, in what manner he had been educated, and his plan and mode of government.

Pericles was descended, by both his parents from the greatest and most illustrious families of Athens. His father Xanthippus, who defeated at Mycale the king of Persia's lieutenants, married Agarista, niece to Clisthenes, who expelled the Pisistratidæ, or descendants of Pisistratus the tyrant, and established a popular government in Athens. Pericles had long prepared himself for the designs he formed of engaging in state affairs.‡

He was brought up under the most learned men of his age, and particularly Anaxagoras of Clazomene, surnamed the Intelligent, from his being the first, as we are told, who ascribed human events, as well as the formation and government of the universe, not to chance, as some philosophers, nor to a fatal necessity, as others, but to a superior intelligence, who disposed and governed all things with wisdom. This tenet or opinion prevailed long before his time; but he perhaps set it in a stronger light than all others had done, and taught it methodically and from principle. Anaxagoras instructed his pupil perfectly in that part of philosophy that relates to nature, and which is therefore called Physics. This study gave him a strength and greatness of soul which raised him above an infinite number of vulgar prejudices, and vain practices generally observed in his time; and which in affairs of government and military enterprises, often disconcerted the wisest and most necessary measures, or de

* Dan. ix. 23-27.

Bishop of Meaux's Universal History.

Plut. in Vit. Pericl. p. 153-156. The ancients, under this name, comprehended what we call physics and metaphysics; that is, the knowledge of spiritual things, as God and spirits; and that of bodies.

feated them by scrupulous delays, authorised and covered by the special veil of religion. These were sometimes dreams or auguries, at other times dreadful phenomena, as eclipses of the sun or moon, or omens and presages; not to mention the wild chimeras of judicial astrology. The knowledge of nature, free from the grovelling and weak superstitions to which ignorance gives birth, inspired him, says Plutarch, with a well-grounded piety towards the gods, attended with a strength of mind that was immoveable, and a calm hope of the blessings to be expected from them. Although he found infinite charms in this study, he did not however devote himself to it as a philosopher, but as a statesman; and he had so much power over himself, (a very difficult thing,) as to prescribe to himself limits in the pursuit of knowledge.

But the talent he cultivated with the greatest care, because he looked upon it as the most necessary instrument to all who are desirous of conducting and governing the people, was eloquence. And indeed those who possessed this talent, in a free state like that of Athens, were sure of governing in the assemblies, engrossing suffrages, determining affairs, and exercising a kind of absolute power over the hearts and minds of the people. He therefore made this his chief object, and the mark to which all his other improvements, as well as the several sciences he had learned from Anaxagoras, were directed; adorning, to borrow Plutarch's expression, the study of philosophy with the dye of rhetoric; the meaning of which is, that Pericles, to embellish and adorn his discourse, heightened the strength and solidity of reasoning, with the colouring and graces of eloquence.

He had no cause to repent his having bestowed so much time to this study, for his success far exceeded his utmost hopes. The poets, his cotemporaries, used to say, that he lightened, thundered, and agitated all Greece, so powerful was his eloquence. It had those piercing and lively strokes, that reach the inmost soul; and his discoure left always an irresistible incentive, a kind of spur, behind it in the minds of his auditors. He had the art of uniting beauty with strength; and Cicero observes, that at the very time he opposed most strenuously, the inclinations and desires of the Athenians, he had the art to make even severity itself, and the kind of cruelty with which he spoke against the flatterers of the people, popular. There was no resisting the solidity of his arguments, or the harmony of his words; whence it was said, that the goddess of persuasion, with all her graces, resided on his lips. So that Thucydides, his rival and adversary, being one day asked, whether he or Pericles was the best wrestler: answered," whenever I have given him a fall, he affirms the contrary, in such strong and forcible terms, that he persuades all the spectators that I did not throw him, though they themselves saw him on the ground." Nor was he less prudent and reserved, than strong and vehement in his speeches; and it is related, that he never spoke in public, till after he had besought the gods not to suffer any expression to drop from him, either unsuitable to his subject, or offensive to the people. Whenever he went to the assembly, before he came out of the house, he used to say to himself, “ remember, Pericles, that thou art going to speak to men born in the arms of liberty; to Greeks, to Athenians."

The uncommon endeavours which Pericles, according to historians made use of to improve his mind in knowledge, and to attain a perfection in eloquence, are an excellent lesson to such persons as are one day to fill the important offices of state; and a just censure of those, who, disregarding whatever is called study or learning, bring into those employments, upon which they

# Βαφῆ τὴ ῥητορικῇ τὴν φυσιολογίαν ὑποχεόμενος,

Ab Aristophane poeta fulgurare, tonare, permiscere Greciam dictus est.-Cic. in Orat. n. 29. Quid Pericles? De cujus dicendi copia sic accepimus, ut, cum contra voluntatem Atheniensium loqueretur pro salute patriæ, severius tamen id ipsum, quod ille contra populares homines diceret, populare omnibus et jucundum videretur: cujus in labris veteres comici-leporem habitasse dixerunt: tantamque vim in eo fuisse, ut in eorum mentibus, qui audissent, quasi aculeos quosdam relinqueret.-Cic. 1, 3. de Orat. n. 138. Not the historian. Plut. in Symp. 1. i. p. 620.