THE MEDIAN AND THE CYROPAEDIA OF XENOPHON. 3 



about the year 1846 — it came to pass, that the great Behistun 

 Rock Inscription of Darius Hysdaspes was decyphered by 

 Eawlinson. In that great achievement of scholarship and 

 patience was signahzed the resurrection from the buried past of a 

 Histoire Ancienne indeed — the cuneiform records of Babylonia 

 and Assyria. How brilliantly those records — which, when Rollin 

 wrote, were utterly unknown to the learned world of his day — 

 have vindicated his judgment on the historical character of the 

 Cyropaedia, I hope to lay before you, and to discuss the consequent 

 bearing of this circumstance on the questions involved in regard 

 to " Darius the Median." 



In Daniel 5, 31, occur the words : — 



" And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about 

 threescore and two years old." 



Dr. Driver — following the line taken by many other critics — 

 makes an elaborate attempt, in his commentary on the Book of 

 Daniel, to represent the Writer of the Book as being obsessed 

 with the idea, that the reign of an independent Median king — 

 Darius the Median — interposed between the conquest of Babylon 

 and the reign of Cyrus. The vision of Daniel, however, contained 

 in the 8th chapter, would seem to clearly show that the idea 

 before the writer's mind was not that of a Median King succeeded 

 by a Persian — but of a united Medo -Persian Empire. This is 

 shown by the symbolism. We read in the 12th verse 



" The ram which thou sawest, having two horns, are the 

 Kings of Media and Persia." 



Dr. Driver contended that one of the horns — the one lower 

 than the other — represented a Median kingdom, coming after 

 the Babylonian, and followed and superseded by a Persian. 

 But this would not agree with the symbolism. For the ram is 

 one : symbolizing the one united empire, the Medo-Persian of 

 history ; the horns are two, symbolizing two kings and the two 

 nations of which the one empire was composed — the Medes and 

 Persians. The rough goat of the vision — the King of Grecia, 

 Alexander the Great — breaks both the horns of the ram. 

 Alexander, as history tells us, brought to an end the united 

 Medo-Persian empire ; but it was certainly not Alexander that 



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