At length the Babylonians grew weary of their king.  Nabonidus had never been popular, and the discontent of the people at length called for the intervention of the suzerain.  In 538 Cyrus moved against Babylon, and Nabonidus now retreated into the city with his troops, and prepared for a siege.  But Cyrus, taking advantage of the time of the year when the waters were lowest, diverted the Tigris, so that his soldiers were able to enter the city without striking a blow.  Nabonidus surrendered, and Belsharuzur was slain.  With him perished the second Chaldaean Empire.

The sagacious conqueror did not pillage the city, and treated the citizens with clemency.  Cyrus associated his son Cambyses with himself, making him King of Babylon.  Nothing in Babylon was changed, and she remained what she had been since the fall of Assyria, the real capital of the regions between the Mediterranean and the Zapcos.  The Persian dominion extended undisputed as far as the Isthmus of Suez.  Under Cyrus took place the first return of the Jews to Jerusalem.

According to Xenophon, the great Persian, in 529 B.C., died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying them by his wisdom; but Herodotus declares that he perished miserably in fighting with the barbarian hosts of the Massagetae, on the steppes of Turkestan, beyond the Arxes.  He had believed that his destiny was to found an empire in which all other ancient empires should be merged, and he all but accomplished the stupendous task.  When he passed away, Egypt alone remained to be conquered.  Cambyses succeeded, took up the enterprise against Egypt; but after a series of successes met with reverses in Ethiopia, which affected his mind, and he is said to have ended his own life.  Power fell into the hands of a chief of one of the seven great clans, the famous Darius, son of Hystaspes, whose rival was Nebuchadrezzar III., then King of Babylon.

Once more, in his reign, Babylon was besieged and fell, Nebuchadrezzar being executed.  He was an impostor who had pretended to be the son of the great Nebuchadrezzar.  And now approached the last days of the greatness of the Eastern world, for the eve of the Macedonian conquest of the Near East had arrived.

* * * * *

FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS

The Antiquities of the Jews

Josephus’s “Antiquities of the Jews” traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great war.  He also wrote an autobiography (see Lives and Letters) and a polemical treatise, “Flavius Josephus against Apion.”  His style is so classically elegant that critics have called him the Greek Livy.  The following summary of the “Antiquities of the Jews” contains the substance of the really valuable sections, other portions being little else than a paraphrase of the histories embodied in the Old Testament.

I.—­From Alexander to Antiochus