shorter time, in places.  To a slight extent it corrupted Zoroastrianism; but, on the whole, from the date of the fall of Babylon it declined.  “Bel bowed down; Nebo stooped;” “Merodach was broken in pieces.”  Judgment was done upon the Babylonian graven images; and the system, of which they formed a necessary part, having once fallen from its proud pre-eminence, gradually decayed and vanished.

Parallel with the decline of the old Semitic idolatry was the advance of its direct antithesis, pure spiritual Monotheism.  The same blow which laid the Babylonian religion in the dust struck off the fetters from Judaism.  Purified and refined by the precious discipline of adversity, the Jewish system, which Cyrus, feeling towards it a natural sympathy, protected, upheld, and replaced in its proper locality, advanced from this time in influence and importance, leavening little by little the foul mass of superstition and impurity which came in contact with it.  Proselytism grew more common.  The Jews spread themselves wider.  The return from, the captivity, which Cyrus authorized almost immediately after the capture of Babylon, is the starting point from which we may trace a gradual enlightenment of the heathen world by the dissemination of Jewish beliefs and practices—­such dissemination being greatly helped by the high estimation in which the Jewish system was held by the civil authority, both while the empire of the Persians lasted, and when power passed to the Macedonians.

On the fall of Babylon its dependencies seem to have submitted to the conqueror, with a single exception.  Phoenicia, which had never acquiesced contentedly either in Assyrian or in Babylonian rule, saw, apparently, in the fresh convulsion that was now shaking the East, an opportunity for recovering autonomy.  It was nearly half a century since her last struggle to free herself had terminated unsuccessfully.  A new generation had grown up since that time—­a generation which had seen nothing of war, and imperfectly appreciated its perils.  Perhaps some reliance was placed on the countenance and support of Egypt, which, it must have been felt, would view with satisfaction any obstacle to the advance of a power wherewith she was sure, sooner or later, to come into collision.  At any rate, it was resolved to make the venture.  Phoenicia, on the destruction of her distant suzerain, quietly resumed her freedom; abstained from making any act of submission to the conqueror; while, however, at the same time, she established friendly relations for commercial purposes with one of the conqueror’s vassals, the prince who had been sent into Palestine to re-establish the Jews at Jerusalem.