Such was the Hebrew commonwealth in the dark ages of its history, under the protection of the Persian kings.  It formed a part of the province of Syria, but the internal government was administered by the high-priests.  After the return from exile Joshua, Joachim, and Eliashib successively filled the pontifical office.  The government thus was not unlike that of the popes, abating their claims to universal spiritual dominion, although the office of high-priest was hereditary.  Jehoiada, son of Eliashib, reigned from 413 to 373, and he was succeeded by his son Johanan, under whose administration important changes took place during the reign of Artaxerxes III., called Ochus, the last but two of the Persian monarchs before the conquest of Persia by Alexander.

The Persians had in the mean time greatly degenerated in their religious faith and observances.  Magian rites became mingled with the purer religion of Zoroaster, and even the worship of Venus was not uncommon.  Under Cyrus and Darius there was nothing peculiarly offensive to the Jews in the theism of Ormuzd, which was the old religion of the Persians; but when images of ancient divinities were set up by royal authority in Persepolis, Susa, Babylon, and Damascus, the allegiance of the Jews was weakened, and repugnance took the place of sympathy.  Moreover, a creature of Artaxerxes III., by the name of Bagoses, became Satrap of Syria, and presumed to appoint as the high-priest at Jerusalem Joshua, another son of Jehoiada, and severely taxed the Jews, and even forced his way into the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctuary of the Temple,—­a sacrilege hard to be endured.  This Bagoses poisoned his master, and in the year 338 B.C. elevated to the throne of Persia his son Arses, who had a brief reign, being dethroned and murdered by his father.  In 336 Darius III. became king, under whom the Persian monarchy collapsed before the victories of Alexander.

Judaea now came under the dominion of this great conqueror, who favored the Jews, and on his death, 323 B.C., it fell to the possession of Laomedon, one of his generals; while Egypt was assigned to Ptolemy Soter, son of Lagus.  Between these princes a war soon broke out, and Laomedon was defeated by Nicanor, one of Ptolemy’s generals; and Palestine refusing to submit to the king of Egypt, Ptolemy invaded Judaea, besieged Jerusalem, and took it by assault on the Sabbath, when the Jews refused to fight.  A large number of Jews were sent to Alexandria, and the Jewish colony ultimately formed no small part of the population of the new capital.  Some eighty thousand Jews, it is said, were settled in Alexandria when Palestine was governed by Greek generals and princes.  But Judaea was wrested from Ptolemy Lagus by Antigonus, and again recovered by Ptolemy after the battle of Ipsus, in 301 B.C.  Under Ptolemy Egypt became a powerful kingdom, and still more so under his son Philadelphus, who made Alexandria the second capital of the world,—­commercially, indeed, the