HISTORIC 





supreme God, who fills the wide circle of the heaven, in the 

 I to whom they are addressed." 



The Median kingdom was not of long duration. Itno'f ori- 

 ginally a province of the Assyrian empire, it shook off the foreign 

 "ii that empire collapsed, and sprang almost immediately 

 in, importance. Allied with the rising power of the Babylonians, 

 it pavo tin- finishing strokes to Assyrian existence, and included 

 v. niaii its bonlfi-H the smaller but still strong province of Persia. 

 : iiout the exercise of much cruelty, and the exhibition <.!' 

 ;i !' roeity which betokened the barbarian, were the Persians 

 Hiilxlucd; and it ia probable that at no time won the conntry 

 -i'm|ilctely under subjection, unless it might bo in the plains 

 iiiul lowlands, the warrior caste and the princes preserving in 

 the highlands the spirit and even the form of independence. 

 The Medea were almost afraid they had good reason to bo so 

 of the acquisition they had made. They saw in the superior 

 intellects and greater knowledge of their subjects tho signs of a 

 power that might one day prove fatal to their rule, and they 

 endeavoured by all the means at tueir disposal to conciliate 

 them, though not till after they had made irreconcilable ene- 

 mies of them. The Persians temporised, waited for their 

 opportunity, and never ceased, while yielding nominal allegiance 

 to tho Medo, to look forward to tho day when tho tables should 

 be turned, and when the one pure religion and the one Aryan 

 (noble) race should bo acknowledged as supreme. 



So powerful had they become, and so threatening had grown 

 the position of external enemies in tho time of Astyages (called 

 Ahosuerus in tho book of Daniel), who reigned in Media about 

 565 B.C., that tho Modes thought it advisable to conciliate the 

 Persians in every possible way. Astyagef ^ave his daughter to 

 bo married to Cambyses, ono of the chief of Persian princes, 

 and a member of the royal house. The issue of this marriage 

 was Cyrus, immortal in human history, and specially famous as 

 tho saviour of his conntry, tho man who made the Medes 

 exchange with the Persians the supremacy on the throne. This 

 young man, seeing as ho grew up the exact position of things, 

 and ever mindful of what his countrymen had suffered at 

 Median hands in the old time, conceived the scheme of over- 

 throwing tho dynasty and of seating a Persian upon the throne 

 of the two kingdoms. Though scarcely arrived at maturity, ho 

 went through tho land, inflaming the minds of the Persians 

 by tho remembrance of ancient wrongs ; and making an oppor- 

 tunity, he unfurled his standard and marched against his grand- 

 father Astyages, who was overthrown and flung into prison. 

 Cyaxares II., a kinsman of Cyrus, was seated on the throne, 

 while Cyrus pursued both against the Medes and Babylonians a 

 aeries of brilliant conquests whicb made the Persian arms 

 supreme in Asia. The Babylonian power he completely sub- 

 verted, giving it the coup de grace when he captured the city of 

 Babylon under circumstances which must be familiar to all 

 readers of the Old Testament. " Belshazzar the king made a 

 great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before 

 the thousand." Relying on the enormous strength of the city 

 walls and on the power of his army, contemptuous of tho host 

 of former subjects who had come to invade him, and careless in 

 his supposed security, the Babylonian king took no military 

 precaution to guard against tho enemy that was encamped 

 before his gates. Cyrus, recognising the great strength of tho 

 defences, gave them the go-by, unwilling to hurl his men to 

 certain death when no advantage could be derived from tho 

 sacrifice. Whilst tho Babylonians revelled and drank, whilst 

 on their walls were appearing those dreadful and mysterious 

 characters which none could decipher save tho prophet of God, 

 the Perso-Median troops were diverting the course of the river 

 which ran through tho city into a canal that had been dug for 

 it, and which drained the river-bed. Along the bed tho men of 

 Cyrus marched, and coming into the terror-stricken city found 

 no resistance worth speaking about. Prom point to point they 

 went till they came to the royal palace, where Belshazzar was 

 giving a dinner to a thousand of his lords. What happened 

 there all must know. Even as the words of interpretation wore 

 being uttered by the prophet Daniel, the Persian warriors rushed 

 into the hall ; vain was tho desperate resistance of the guards, 

 useless the valour with which Belshazzar himself and his com- 

 panions at the feast drew their swords and stood at bay. In a 

 few minutes tho place was won ; the prophecy, which even yet 

 was discernible npon the wall, was dreadfully fulfilled ; and tho 

 Babylonian kingdom, having been weighed in the balance and 



found wanting, was then and there given over to the Mede* mud 

 Fenians. Tho end had come. 



" CrownlcM and soeptr*lM BeUbazzar lay, 

 A robo of purple round u form of 



Cyras, under tho direction of Inn uncle, Cyaxares II., who had 

 accompanied tho army, took military possession of the famon:; 

 city, and having made it as strong as possible went back to 

 Persia, laden with the almost fabulous wealth which raooewiT* 

 Babylonian kings, notably Nebuchadnezzar, had accumulated. 

 Cyaxares, anxious to secure the benefits of so fine a city, and 

 glad of an opportunity which gave him, a Persian, the mean* 

 of eradicating from tho Median mind that there was any actual 

 necessity for governing from their capital, moved the seat of his 

 government to Babylon, a situation which also afforded a better 

 base for those military operations which he contemplated against 

 several other of the Eastern monarchies. Soon after this removal 

 occurred the remarkable incident chronicled in the book of the 

 prophet Daniel. The Persian king, called in the prophet's 

 writings Darius, a title common to all the Median princes, and 

 meaning simply " the king," began to persecute the priesthood 

 which he found in Babylon. The Persians, as the worshippers 

 of one God, and as followers of tho simple and pore faith of 

 Zoroaster, were extremely averse to the complicated and de- 

 grading superstitions which were common in all the countries 

 around them. It had been tho most galling part of their 

 bondage to the Mede, that they had to submit to the interference 

 of a powerful priesthood, which dominated to the exclusion of 

 all that was noble and admirable in tho national mind, and 

 which sought only to establish its own power at tho expense of 

 whatever else might come in its way. Cyrus and Cyaxarea, for 

 the latter now associated his nephew in the government which 

 that nephew had originally handed over to him, never lost an 

 opportunity of showing their contempt and hatred for profes- 

 sional priesthoods and for the superstitions they taught. In 

 Babylon they found a superstition and a priesthood worse than 

 those of the Median magi. They determined, both as a matter 

 of policy and of morals, to insult the power which held the 

 people in awe, a power which, as they well knew, might at any 

 time cause an insurrectionary spirit to spring up among the 

 people, and which from their hearts they despised as being 

 based upon imposture, ignorance, and falsehood. Among the 

 prisoners at Babylon was a man, one out of thousands, to whom 

 the Persian princes were drawn at once by the force of a 

 religious and intellectual sympathy, as well as by his personal 

 merits. Daniel, the prophet of the one God, the man who had 

 dared even Belshazzar' s wrath in testifying against the wicked- 

 ness of Babylon, and in asserting the only adorable Jehovah, 

 was tho man whom Cyaxares singled out to help him in govern- 

 ing the new kingdom and in overthrowing the priesthood. The 

 Persian and the Hebrew worshipped ono God, though in different 

 ways ; and though the latter deemed it essential to proper wor- 

 ship that the service of God should bo splendid and served by 

 an exclusive priesthood, while tho former held simplicity of 

 worship without the intervention of priests to bo tho more 

 acceptable sacrifice, yet the conditions under which the two 

 met in Babylon prevented any clashing in this regard. Danfel 

 was an exile, a fugitive, singing the Lord's song in a strange 

 land, remote from Jerusalem, "where God ought to be wor- 

 shipped," away from the possibility of partaking in those cere- 

 monies and ritualistic performances which the Jews had been 

 taught to look upon as so well-pieasing to God. Whatever he 

 may have longed for, ho could not at Babylon either celebrate 

 or partake in any ceremonial of Jewish worship which miglit 

 affront his new master. His prayers, his way of making his 

 wants known to God, and his mode of worship, must have beerf 

 as simple and unaffected as those of Cyrus himself. Ho was 

 an alien, it is true ; but so were tho Persian princes themselves 

 aliens, not only among the Babylonians whom they had con- 

 quered, but also among the Medes by whose arms they had 

 conquered. Herein was another bond of union. So Daniel was 

 promoted to honour, apparently to the rank of grand vizier, 

 in the Persian court. Cyrus was gone on military expeditions 

 which took him to Egypt and to Syria ; Cyaxares ruled alone, 

 with tho help of such assistance as tho Hebrew prophet gave. 

 We may reasonably suppose that some popular outburst of 

 'feeling on account of tho priesthood, some fanatical piece cf 

 enthusiasm of the priests themselves, led him in a moment of 



