AND AHASUERUS. 
113 
said unto her, Esther, what is the matter ? I am thy brother; be 
of good cheer. Thou shalt not die, though our commandment 
be general: come near ! 
“ And so he held up his golden sceptre, and laid it upon her 
neck, and embraced her ; and said, Speak unto me! Then she 
said unto him, I saw thee, my lord, as an angel of God, and 
my heart was troubled for fear of thy majesty ! And as she was 
speaking, she fell down again, for faintness. Then the king was 
troubled, and all his servants comforted her.” — A. B. Esther, 
chap. xv. 
With the sacred volume in my hands, which contained these 
accounts of the devoted goodness of this fairest daughter of 
Israel, I could not look on her tomb before me, without feeling 
an awe and admiration that made my heart bow to the memory 
of such perfect virtue, in such perfect beauty. 
Scaliger has supposed the Ahasuerus of Esther to have been 
Xerxes, the invader of Greece; but time, place, and circum¬ 
stance, in the collected evidence of other authors, appear to 
have established the fact, that her royal husband was Artaxerxes 
Longimanus, (who flourished about the middle of the fifth cen¬ 
tury before the Chistian era;) Persian writers call him Bahman, 
Ardashir Dirodaste. Bahman, being an attributive name, testi¬ 
fying his goodness ; and Dirodaste, describing his long arms, or 
far-stretching power. Ahasuerus seems to have been a sort of 
general title, with Jewish writers, for the Persian monarchs ? 
in like manner with that of Pharoah, for the sovereigns of Egypt. 
Indeed, the Persians themselves often signified their kings by 
the common name of Khosroo. And a century ago, many 
English authors denominated the monarchs of Persia by the 
appellation Sefi, or Sophi; which was the proper name only, of 
VOL. II. 
Q 
