"cians, and all the nations of Lesser Asia, he

46

appointed Croesus to be their General, and "sent him with them to invade Media, and “then returned again to Babylon.

66

Cyrus having full intelligence of all these "proceedings, made suitable preparations to withstand the storm; and when all was ready, "marched against the enemy. By this time, "Croesus had passed over the river Halys, "taken the city of Pteria, and in a manner destroyed all the country there"about: but before he could pass Belshazzar 8. any further, Cyrus came up with

66

66

Anno 548.

him, and having engaged him in battle, put "all his numerous army to flight; whereon "Crœsus returning to Sardis, the chief city of "his kingdom, dismissed all his auxiliaries, "ordering them to be again with him at the

beginning of the ensuing spring: but Cyrus,

pursuing the advantage of his victory, fol"lowed close after him into Lydia," when the few forces that Croesus could collect together being defeated, he shut himself up in Sardis, where " Cyrus pressed the siege so vigorously, "that he took the city before any of his allies "could come to its relief, and Croesus in it."

After this Cyrus continued sometime in "Lesser Asia, till he had brought all the se"veral nations which inhabited it, from the

66

66

"Egean Sea" (the Western boundary of his conquests) to the Euphrates, into subjection to him. From hence he went into Syria and "Arabia, and there did the same thing; and "then marched into the upper" (or Northern) "countries of Asia, and having there also set"tled all things in a thorough obedience under "his dominion, he again entered Assyria, and "marched on" (Southward) "towards Baby"lon, that being the only place which now "held out against him: and having overthrown "Belshazzar in battle, he shut him up in Ba

66

bylon, and there besieged him. This hap"pened in the ninth year after the taking of "Sardis. This siege proved a very difficult “work;" yet, after two years, he took the city by stratagem, turning the course of the river, and entering it through the channel thus laid dry," and this concluded all his conquests, after "a war of one and twenty years. For so long

66

66

was it from his coming out of Persia with "his army for the assistance of Cyaxares, to "his taking of Babylon; during all which "time he lay abroad in the field, carrying

66

66

on his conquests from place to place, till

at length he had subdued all the East, from "the Egean Sea to the river Indus, and thereby "erected the greatest Empire that had ever "been in Asia to that time."

R

There is no mention made in the prophecy of any further actions of the Ram, as nothing worthy of notice was afterwards performed; the expedition of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, into Egypt and Ethiopia, in which he lost almost the whole of the army; and the latter expedition of Darius into Thrace, in the year A. C. 513, from which " he returned with the loss of half his army;" or those of Xerxes against Greece, carried on between the years A. C. 480, and A. C. 469, from which may be dated the decline of the Persian empire, being by no means to be considered as contained in this account, which describes only those actions by which the empire of the Medes and Persians was first established, or by which they " became great."

In the following verses we are told, that the kingdom of Alexander the Great succeeded to the kingdom of the Medes and Persians; its rapid conquests, great strength, and extensive but transitory dominion, are beautifully and accurately described. Ver. 5. " And as I ἐσ was considering, behold an He-goat came "from the West on the face of the whole earth, "and touched not the ground; and the Goat "had a notable horn between his eyes. 6. And "he came to the Ram that had two horns, "which I had seen standing before the river,

"and ran unto him in the fury of his power. "7. And I saw him come close unto the Ram, "and he was moved with choler against him, "and smote the Ram, and brake his two horns; " and there was no power in the Ram to stand "before him, but he cast him down to the

66

ground, and stamped upon him; and there 66 was none that could deliver the Ram out of "his hand. 8. Therefore the He-goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and for it came four notable ones toward the four winds " of heaven."

66

66

66

up

These words describe the victories obtained by Alexander the Great over Darius; with the consequent fall of the Persian, and the rise of the Grecian empire, and the subsequent division of the kingdom of Alexander into four minor kingdoms; and as I can add nothing to Bishop Newton's interpretation of this part of the prophecy, I shall give it in his own words.

The He-goat is said to come with extraordinary swiftness from the West, or from Europe; and the marches of Alexander at the head of the forces of Greece "were so swift, and his conquests so rapid, that he might be said in a manner to fly over the ground without touching it; he flew with victory swifter than others can travel; often with his horse pursuing his ene

mies with the spur whole days and nights, and sometimes making long marches for several days one after the other; as once he did in pursuit of Darius, of near forty miles a day, for elevén days together; so that by the speed of his marches he came upon his enemy before they were aware of him, and conquered them before they could be in a posture to resist him." Bishop Newton observes further, that "we can hardly read the description given of the overthrow of the Ram by the He-goat, without having some image of Darius's army standing and guarding the river Granicus, and of Alexander on the other side with his forces plunging in, swimming across the stream, and rushing on the enemy with all the fire and fury that can be imagined. It was certainly a strange, rash, mad attempt, with only about thirty-five thousand men to attack, at such disadvantage, an army of more than five times the number: but he was successful in it, and this success diffused a terror of his name, and opened his way to the conquest of Asia. And I saw him close unto the Ram:' he had several close engagements, or set battles with the King of Persia, and particularly at the river Granicus, in Phrygia, at the Straits of Issus, in Cilicia, and in the plains of Arbela, in Assyria. And was moved with choler against him,' for the cruel