Both these accounts agree in naming Cyrus as the first king, and both conclude with the names of Artaxerxes and Darius. Now this Artaxerxes, the fifth king of the sacred account, who, according to Nehemiah, reigned upwards of thirty-two years *, can be no other than Artaxerxes Longimanus (13). For if he were Artaxerxes Mnemon, Ezra † and Nehemiah ‡, who both went up with Zerubabel to Jerusalem, must have lived not less than a century and a half, according to any view of their history, which is incredible.

Eliashib also was high-priest in the time of § this Artaxerxes, and the Alexandrine chronicle, which gives the most exact account of the succession of the highpriests, makes Eliashib to have died in the eleventh year of Darius Nothus.

Being sure then of our ground as to the first and fifth kings of the sacred account, we have only to ascertain who were the

*Nehem. vi.

+ Ezra ii. 2.

three intermediate kings. I shall assume, for the present, that Ahasuerus *, the second king mentioned by Ezra, is the Greek Cambyses, which is the general opinion. There remain, therefore, two kings of the sacred account, viz. Artaxerxes †, the third on the list, and Darius †, the fourth on the list, to be reconciled with three of the Greek historians, viz. Smerdis, Darius Hystaspis, and Xerxes.

There can be no doubt that three princes reigned. Ezra, therefore, who in recording events relating to the Jews, merely incidentally mentions the reigns in which they happened, has omitted one, probably finding no event affecting the Jews worthy of record in the omitted reign. If we can determine, therefore, which of the three princes has been omitted, the remaining reigns must then coincide. Now Smerdis reigned seven months after the death of Cambyses, Darius Hystaspis reigned

* Ezra iv. 6. † Ezra iv. 7. Ezra iv. 24,

thirty-six years, and Xerxes twenty-one years. From the length of the respective reigns, therefore, we should be led to conclude that Smerdis was the prince omitted. In which case Xerxes would appear to be the fourth king mentioned by Ezra, under the name of Darius. But the name Darius occurring as the fourth in both accounts, it has usually been considered that the same prince is spoken of in both places, viz. Darius Hystaspis. In this case Xerxes must be the king omitted by Ezra, in whose reign he found nothing to relate concerning the Jews. When, however, we consider the state of anxiety and suspense in which the Jews were at that time with respect to the rebuilding of their city, can we suppose that they would have remained silent for upwards of sixty-one years, from the second or third year of Darius Hystaspis, when, according to the supposition, they obtained permission to rebuild their temple, to the seventh of Artaxerxes Longimanus,

when Ezra went up to Jerusalem? or is it not more likely, if we could get over the difficulty as to the name Darius, that the short reign of Smerdis, rather than that of Xerxes, has been omitted?

With regard to the name Darius, I do not think it any great impediment to the supposition. For, like Pharaoh with the Egyptians, it appears to have been a very common title with the Persian kings; and indeed signified nothing more than the sovereign. "It may be observed," says Sir William Jones, "that Dara, or the Sovereign, was rather an epithet than a proper name of the Persian kings; so that the Daricks, or pieces of money, which were known at Athens, might have been coined by any Persian monarch, and have borne that name without the least impropriety *." The Jewish writers, at least from the time of their great chronicle, the

* Short History of Persia, by Sir William Jones. Works, vol. xii. p. 409.

Seder Olam Rabbah, make no difficulty whatever upon this point. For they, including the learned Maimonides, generally consider the Darius in question to be the same king as the Artaxerxes in whose seventh year Ezra received his commission; attaching, therefore, no great importance to these different titles (14). Sir William Jones also observes, "the Asiatic princes have constantly assumed new titles or epithets at different periods of their lives, or on different occasions; a custom which we have seen prevalent in our own times, both in Iran (Persia) and Hindustan, and which has been a source of great confusion in the Scripture account of Babylonian occurrences *."

But let us remember that there is an instance in the book of Daniel of the very point we are supposing. For he speaks of that prince who, in conjunction with Cyrus, overthrew Babylon, as Darius

* Sir William Jones, Discourse on the Persians.