480. The passage of Xerxes over the Hellespont into Greece, and battles of Thermopyle and Salamis.

464. Artaxerxes and Longimanus reigns,

457. Ezra returns into Judæa. Johanan, the father of Jaddua, was now grown up, having a chamber in the temple.

444. Nehemiah returns into Judæa. Herodotus writes.

431. The Peloponnesian war begins.

428.

Nehemiah drives away Manasseh, the

brother of Jaddua, because he had married Nicaso, the daughter of Sanballat.

424. Darius Nothus reigns.

422. Sanballat builds a temple in Mount Gerizim, and makes his son-in-law, Manasseth, the first high-priest thereof.

412. Hitherto the Priests and Levites were numbered, and written in the Chronicles of the Jews, before the death of Nehemiah: at which time

either Johanan or Juddua was high-priest. And here ends the Sacred History of the Jews.

405. Artaxerxes Mnemon reigns. The end of the Peloponnesian war.

359. Artaxerxes Ochus reigns.

338. Arogus reigns.

336. Darius Codomannus reigns.

332. The Persian empire conquered by Alexander the Great.

331. Darius Codomannus, the last king of Persia, slain.

SHORT

A

ACCOUNT

OF

PERSIA.

CYRUS, the founder of the Persian monarchy, the second of the four great monarchies of the ancient world, inherited the kingdom of Persia from his father, Cambyses; that of Media from his uncle, Cyaxeres ; and became sovereign of all Assyria, by his conquest of Babylon.

The Persian empire, therefore, consisted at this time of the kingdom of Persia, situated on the east of the Persian gulph; Media, between the gulph and the Caspian sea; Babylonia; Nineveh, and all Assyria,

Cyrus had also conquered the different kingdoms of Asia Minor, Syria, and other parts of Arabia, before the reduction of Babylon. After that event he subdued all the nations between these

dominions and the Red sea, and carried his victorious arms even to the confines of Ethiopia. His son and successor, Cambyses, added to these dominions the kingdom of Egypt, the history of which nation is traced back as far as that of Assyria, since the first sovereign of that country, Menes, is said to have been contemporary with Nimrod; and, after his reign, Egypt was divided into four dynasties, or states, called Tunis, Memphis, Thebes, and Thin. Egypt was situated on the north-east of Africa, and joined to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez; the celebrated river of the Nile ran through this country, and rendered it one of the most fertile in the whole world. Egypt was the only addition made by Cambyses to the Persian empire, nor did his successors increase its extent. Persia, in its ancient state, extended from the Hellespont to the Indus, above 2800 miles, and from Pontus to the shores of Arabia, above 2,000 miles. Several attempts were made by the sovereigns of Persia, particularly by Xerxes, to conquer Greece, but at that time the Greeks were a free and independent people, and not only resisted all the efforts of the Persians against them, but even ventured to invade that people; and the superiority of. the Grecian soldiers over the Persians, was evinced when the

battles between the two nations at Marathon, Salamis, Platea, and Mycale, were fought, and which incontestably proved that the Persians had more reliance upon their numbers, and the splendor and richness with which they were caparisoned, than upon the valor and discipline of their troops.

The ten thousand Greeks who went to the assistance of Cyrus the younger, when that Prince made war against his brother, Artaxerxes Memmon, King of Persia, in the year 401, before the birth of Christ, has been celebrated in history under the "retreat of the ten thousand."

After the death of Cyrus, in the engagement near Babylon, the Grecian army, under the conduct of Xenophon, whose valor and prudence as a General could only be equalled by the elegance of his style in writing, retreated through Armenia and Paphlagonia.

In their religion the Persians were very superstitious; they paid the greatest veneration to the sun, the moon, and the stars; they sacrificed to fire, but the supreme Deity was never represented by statues among them.