hours, the Assyrian general issued orders that none should interfere with her; and in this manner she passed three days in the Assyrian encampment. On the fourth day, Holofernes gave a feast to his own particular friends in his household, and being inflamed with wine, he desired his chief eunuch to summon the Hebrew woman to the entertainment. Judith accepted the invitation with apparent alacrity, and during the feast completely "ravished the heart" of the Assyrian general. After she had partaken from her own stock of provisions, Holofernes desired her to "drink and be merry with him." She complied, declaring that her life was magnified in her that day more than all the days since she had been born." Enraptured with her company, the Assyrian general drank deep of the wine, and at length sunk into sleep. Judith seized the opportunity when all the guests had retired, and severing his head from his body with his own sword, escaped to her friends. The Assyrian army, panic-struck at the death of their leader, suddenly betook themselves to flight, and were pursued with great slaughter and the loss of their baggage. Such is the story of Judith and Holofernes, which, whether it be true or traditionary, exhibits a degree of falsehood, duplicity, and treachery, on the part of the Jewess, which cannot be too severely censured. However much her heroism and love of country may be admired, the moral drawn from it exhibits a melancholy instance of human depravity. "The history," says Dr Stackhouse, represents Judith as a woman of great courage, but it no where intimates that she was without faults. The manner of her preparation for her enterprise, and the success which attended it, may make us presume that its design was originally from God, but then the continued strain of falsehood and dissimulation with which it is carried on, must needs persuade us that the means of conducting it were left to the woman, who has given on this occasion a remarkable specimen of sagacity and artifice."

Chyniladon does not appear to have long survived the rout of his army, and he is said to have been succeeded by Sarac, or Saracus, about the year 626 before the Christian era. Here, again, the Assyrian history, which is always clear and intelligible when it is recorded in the Scriptures, becomes confused, obscure, and uncertain. Sir Isaac Newton, who rejects most of the Assyrian history as fabulous before the reign of Pul, the contemporary of Menahem king of Israel, supposed Sarac to be the real Sardanapalus; while the authors of the Universal History and Rollin make Sarac to be another name of Chyniladon, who was therefore the last king of Assyria. It is, however, generally admitted that the successor of Chyniladon was called Sarac. It was either during the last years of the reign of Chyniladon, or at the accession of Sarac, that the government of Babylon and the command of the Assyrian forces in Chaldea were committed to Nabopolassar, who appears from his name to have been an Assyrian, and probably a descendant of Nabonassar, king of Babylon. This chief, taking advantage of the effeminacy and weakness of Sarac, revolted against him, made himself master of Babylon, and maintained the independence of the Babylonian kingdom. To maintain his authority in this usurpation, Nabopolassar entered into an alliance with Cyaxares, king of Media, the son of Phraortes who had perished at the siege of Nineveh, and who had recovered the kingdom of Media from the Assyrian monarchs after the death of Holofernes. This prince had even obtained a victory over the Assyrians, and laid siege to Nineveh in the second year of his reign, which he had been compelled to raise by a sudden irruption of the Scythians into his dominions. Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, married the daughter of Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, or, according to some authorities, which is more likely, his sister, and thus the two families became related by affinity. The united princes conspired against Sarac, and the invasion of Assyria immediately

be merely conjectural. A few notices are recorded by the ancient historians of some of their observances. Diodorus Siculus says, that Ninus divided this ancient empire into provinces and governments, and that this division was fully established by Semiramis and her successors; but here he quotes solely from the uncertain authority of Ctesias. Herodotus says that the people were distributed into a certain number of tribes, and that their occupations were hereditary. Strabo asserts that they had several distinct councils and tribunals for public affairs; and that the sovereigns had three tribunals-the first to dispose of young women in marriage, the second took cognizance of theft, and the third of violence. The girls who were marriageable were assembled in a particular place of the city or town, and put up for sale to those who wanted wives, and the purchase-money of the most beautiful formed the dowry of the more homely, and was given to those individuals who were willing to marry them with the smallest portion. Assyria, after submitting to the rule of the Chaldeans, passed from them to the Persians, and from them in succession to the Romans, Parthians, Persians, Saracens, and Turks. At present it forms part of the Persian territories, and is remarkable for little except the robberies of the Kurds, who have infested its mountainous parts for centuries. There were some Christians in Assyria in the early ages of Christianity. Assyria is in cluded in one of Isaiah's prophecies (lxix. 23, 24, 25), which is yet to be fulfilled: "In that day there shall be a high-way out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance;" which doubtless has a reference to the time when "the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, and all Israel shall be saved." Salmon informs

us that Assyria, now a province, is finely diversified by mountains, hills, valleys, and plains, possessing a fruitful soil, and having some fine streams; but "being under the dominion of the slothful Turk, or rather a frontier country between Turkey and Persia (the greater part of it belonging to the latter), there is very little of it under cultivation. There are, however, vast flocks of cattle fed in this country, the owners living in tents like the Arabs. There are few towns or villages, but the houses lie dispersed at the distance of a musket-shot from one another; and there is scarcely a house which has not a vineyard, although they make no wine, but dry their grapes. The governing part of the country are Mahometans, but the common people are said to be a kind of Christians, at least they go under that denomination; but there are not a more brutish people upon the face of the earth, and not less addicted to thieving and plundering the caravans than the Arabs." See BABYLONIA and MEDIA.

ATAD, a thorn, THRESHING-FLOOR OF, the name of a place where the sons of Jacob, and the Egyptians who accompa nied them, mourned for Jacob, which was after that event called Abel-Mizraim, or the mourning of the Egyptians, Gen. 1.11. St Jerome says that this place was between the river Jordan and the city of Jericho, two miles from the river, and three from the city. Dr Wells situates it on the west of the Jordan, and not far from Hebron, and says that “it is uncertain whether Atad is the name of a place or of a man." The sacred historian expressly says it was "beyond Jordan" (verse 10), that is, beyond, not Egypt, from which Jacob's body was brought, but beyond, in reference to the place in which Moses was when he wrote the Book of Genesis, which was east of Jordan, and consequently the "Threshing -Floor" of Atad must have been on the west. "Why they made this Threshing-Floor," says Dr Wells, "rather than the place of interment, the scene of their lamentations, it is not so easy to resolve. Perhaps it was a place more convenient to stay in

for seven days than the Cave of Machpelah; or perhaps it might be the custom at the entrance of the country, whither they were carrying the body for burial, to fall into lamentations, which they might repeat over the grave." The narrative of this mourning for the venerable patriarch is affectingly told in the Book of Genesis. They mourned for him "seven days," which was the space for public mourning among the Jews in succeeding ages, 1 Sam. xxxi. 13; Eccles. xxii. 12; Judith xv. 24; and they appear to have rejoiced the same length of time at solemn weddings, Gen. xxix. 27. The sacred historian informs us that the sons of Jacob and their attendants" mourned with a great and very sore lamentation." Sir John Chardin illustrates this custom of the East by the following curious relation:-" The cries of the Eastern people are especially long in the case of death, and very frightful. I was lodged in 1676 at Ispahan, when the mistress of the house next to mine died. The moment she expired, all the family, to the number of twenty-five or thirty persons, set up such a furious cry that I was quite startled. These cries continue a long time, then cease all at once; they begin again as suddenly at daybreak, and in concert. This enraged kind of mourning continued forty days, not equally violent, but diminishing from day to day. Their longest and most violent acts were when they washed the body, when they perfumed it, when they carried it out to be interred, at making the inventory, and when they divided the effects." See ABEL-MIZRAIM.

ATARGATIS or VENUS, TEMPLE OF, at Carnion, or Carnaim, 1 Macc. v. 43, a city mentioned by Strabo and Ptolemy under the name of Carno in Arabia. Judas Maccabeus slew twentyfive thousand persons at this place, 2 Macc. xii. 26. Atargatis was worshipped in different parts of Syria under the form of a woman in the upper part of the body and of a fish in the lower part, which appears to have been a representation of the fabulous mermaid of more recent times. This idol is supposed to be the

same as the celebrated Dagon worshipped by the Philistines.

ATAROTH, or ATHAROTH, the name of one of the towns on the east side of the Jordan which the tribe of Gad "built," that is, repaired and fortified. It was given to that tribe by Moses, and was noted for the excellent pasturage in its vicinity, Numb. xxxii. 34. ATAROTH was also the name of a town of Samaria in the tribe of Ephraim, about four miles north of Sebaste, or the city of Samaria, called Atharus by St Jerome. There was a town of this name on the frontiers of the territory of Ephraim, between Janohah and Jericho, Josh. xvi. 6, which was probably the same with ATAROTHADDAR, Josh. xvi. 5, xviii. 13.

ATHACH, a city of Judah, one of the cities to which David sent a portion of the spoil taken from the Amalekites, 1 Sam. xxx. 30.

ATHAR. See ETHER.

ATHENS, so called from ATHENE or ATHENAIA, a name of the goddess Minerva, one of the most celebrated and illustrious cities of history, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Attica, and the seat of the Grecian Empire, renowned for the learning, eloquence, and science of some of its citizens, and equally renowned for having produced the most illustrious warriors of antiquity. Athens was sometimes called Πολις or Αστy, the city, by way of eminence, and is situated in 23° 53′ east long. and 39° 2′ north lat. According to the received accounts, Athens was founded by Cecrops about the year 1550 or 1556 before the Christian era, and from him was called Cecropia. It afterwards (according to some ancient writers in the reign of Erecthonius, B.C. 1487, and to others in the reign of Erictheus, about B.C. 1397) received the name of Athens, denominated by the Greeks Ann, from Minerva, who was considered the tutelary goddess of the city. The original city was first erected on the summit of a high rock, and was first called Cranaë, after Cranaus, one of the kings of Athens, and from whom the Pelasgi, and the district of

Attica, took the name of Cranai and Cranaë. A distinction was afterwards made between the primitive settlement on the rock, and the part subsequently added in the plain beneath. The former was called, from its situation, "the upper city," where afterwards stood the Parthenon and other magnificent edifices; the buildings on the plain, where Athens eventually stood, composed "the lower city," which included the harbours of Phalereus or Phalerum, Munichia, and the celebrated Piræus, the last mentioned being known in modern times by the names of Porte Leone and Porto Draco. Ancient Athens, which occupied the site of the present city, but to a much greater extent, was situated like the present on the rivulets of Ilissus and Cephissus, a few miles from the western shore of Attica, 100 miles north-east of Misitra (the ancient Sparta), and about 300 miles south-west of Constantinople. The rivulets now mentioned find their way into the Gulf of Engia, a short distance from the city. Outside of the harbour of the Piræus, under a little island two miles westward, there is an excellent roadstead, containing eighteen fathoms

water.

The warriors, orators, philosophers, and statesmen of ancient Athens, are immortalized in the annals of the world, and many of them are as familiar to us as "household words." To narrate the career of its kings, and, after the fall of the monarchy, of its archons, of its republic, and of the valour of its citizens, displayed in the battles of Marathon, Salamis, Platea, and Mycale;-in a word, to follow all the changes which characterize the history of this celebrated city, would be to enter on a field of historical research altogether foreign to the plan of the present work. Our object is rather to lay before the reader its scriptural statistics, and the events which connect it with the early preaching of Christianity. Its magnificent buildings, including the far-famed Acropolis, its splendid temples and public offices, its walls and gates, would afford subjects for copious description,

denoting the greatness and glory of its once powerful inhabitants. It was in the time of Pericles, who humbled the celebrated Areopagitæ, that Athens attained the summit of its splendour and prosperity, both with respect to the power of the republic, and the extent of the architectural decorations with which the city was adorned. Xenophon says that Athens in his time contained upwards of 10,000 houses, which, at the rate of twelve persons to a house, would give a population of 120,000, far short, however, of what it was when it aspired to give laws to Greece, and poured forth its citizens to battle and victory. The vicissitudes in the history of this city are extraordinary and almost unprecedented, and are as remarkable as the bold and fluctuating dispositions of its citizens. It is finely observed by Plutarch, that the good men whom Athens produced were the most just and equitable in the world; but that its bad citizens could not be surpassed in any age or country for their impiety, perfidiousness, and cruelty. The Athenians have been celebrated in all ages for their love of liberty, and for the great men who were born among them; but favour in that city was attended with no ordinary danger, and its history sufficiently proves, with the exception of a few instances, that the jealousy and frenzy of the people persecuted and disturbed the peace of men who had fought their battles, or shed a lustre upon them by their wisdom, their eloquence, and learning.

The Athenians, after a spirited resistance to Philip king of Macedonia, were at length completely humbled by that monarch in the battle of Cheronea, fought B. C. 333, which may be said to have terminated the power and greatness of the "eye of Greece." During the contests of Alexander's successors they adhered to various leaders; and when the Romans invaded Greece, to frustrate the schemes of the second Philip with the renowned Hannibal, the city became the ally of the conquerors. It was taken by the cele brated Mithridates, king of Pontus; but about eighty-seven years before the