Evelyn Abbott - The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)

The plan of Cyrus succeeded. The removal of Agranis and Sepharvaim made the execution possible; the number of hands at his disposal caused all the works to be carried out at the right time, i. e. before the inundation of the autumn. The storming of the city could be attempted by the river-bed both above and below the city. 77That it took place and was accomplished on the night of a festival, is stated in the narratives of Herodotus and Xenophon, and indicated by the Hebrew prophet in the words "the night of my pleasure was turned to horror," and other phrases (p. 80); and the book of Daniel makes the same assertion. Aristotle is of opinion that even three days after, a third part of the population did not know that the city had been taken. 78Xenophon represents the division of Gobryas as the first to reach the palace; the king falls when defending himself against their attack. By the palace is here meant one of the two royal citadels, either the older on the western bank, or the more recent on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, the palace of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar (III. 375), and the king whom he represents as slain there, must have been Bil-sarussur, the son and heir of Nabonetus. As we have observed, the book of Daniel calls the king who lost his throne and life on the night of the festival, Belshazzar. In addition to him, Nabonetus had a second son, named Nebuchadnezzar (see below, chap, xiv.). Besides the palace of the king, Xenophon speaks of citadels of Babylon which surrendered to the conqueror on the following morning.

After the capture of the metropolis, which was followed by the surrender of Borsippa, and the capture of Nabonetus (538 B.C.), Cyrus, so far as we can tell, showed clemency both towards the king, whom he caused to be taken to Carmania, and to the city of Babylon. The kings of Asshur treated besieged princes and conquered cities in a manner very different from that in which Cyrus treated Astyages, Crœsus and Sardis, Nabonetus and Babylon. Babylonia was not oppressed; the city was not destroyed. Cyrus stepped into the place of the native king. The Babylonian tablets after the capture of the city and the fall of the kingdom, date from the years of the reign of Cyrus over Babylonia, the years "of Kurus, king of Babylon, king of the lands." 79The city of Babylon retained her temples and palaces and her mighty walls. Herodotus tells us expressly that Cyrus did no injury to the walls or the gates of Babylon, 80and twenty years afterwards we find the city in possession of her impregnable works. Xenophon remarks that Cyrus placed troops in the citadels, set captains over them, left behind a sufficient garrison in the city and charged the inhabitants with the maintenance of it; the arrangements then made for keeping guard were in existence still. 81If, therefore, the excerpt of Josephus from Berosus tells us that Cyrus destroyed the walls "outside the city," this can only refer to the great wall which Nebuchadnezzar had built from the Euphrates to the Tigris above Sepharvaim, as a protection against an attack from the north. It would have been a heavy task to level with the ground this fortification throughout its entire length of from 60 to 75 miles, the Persians therefore contented themselves with making large breaches in it. The wall was in this condition when Xenophon came with the ten thousand to Babylon. 82

The fall of the metropolis had decided the fortune of the Babylonian kingdom, and the provinces. The most important of these was Syria, with the great trading places of the Phenicians on the Mediterranean; we remember how many and what severe struggles the subjection of Syria had cost Nebuchadnezzar. At the present moment the approach of the Persians was enough to cause Syria to recognise the supremacy of Cyrus almost without a blow. Herodotus tells us that the Phenicians voluntarily submitted to the Persians; Xenophon mentions that Cyrus had subjugated the Phenicians; Polybius observes that Gaza alone among all the cities of Syria offered resistance; the rest, terrified at the approach of the Persians and the greatness of their power, had surrendered themselves and their lands to them. With the capture of Gaza Cyrus stood on the borders of Egypt. As we have seen, Nebuchadnezzar allowed the states and cities of Syria to retain their native princes, so long as these preserved their fidelity to him; even over the Phenician cities he and his successors placed men of their own royal or priestly families to be at once judges or princes of the cities and viceroys of Babylon. That Tyre surrendered without a struggle, as Herodotus and Polybius tell us of Syria, that Cyrus, like Nebuchadnezzar before him, left the princes who submitted in command, follows from the fact that Hiram, whom Nabonetus had made king of Tyre, continued to reign over the city under Cyrus. 83If Cyrus felt himself compelled to establish princes in the Greek cities of the coast for the first time, who owed their position to him, and could not maintain it without his aid, the cities of Phœnicia had long been accustomed to receive these princes from distant sovereigns. Cyrus and his successors confined themselves in their choice to the old royal families of the Phenician cities; at any rate we find, even under the Achæmenids, men with the hereditary names at the head of Tyre and Sidon. Yet the relations of the Phenician cities did not remain without change. Cyrus, as it seems, availed himself of the old rivalry between Tyre and Sidon to win a further support for his power. Ever since the foundation of Gades, and the times of the first Hiram of Tyre, the contemporary of Solomon, Sidon had been gradually forced by Tyre into the second place; under the Persian kingdom Sidon again appears as the first city of Phœnicia, and her kings have the precedence of those of Tyre and the other cities. 84To the population on the whole the change to the Persian dominion would be regarded with indifference if not with pleasure; a connection with the Persian empire opened a far more extensive market for trade, and secured and protected intercourse over a far greater extent of country than the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar.

The ancient kingdom of Babylon, in which the civilisation of the Semitic stock had taken root some fifteen centuries previously, and had attained to such peculiar development, which had struggled so long and stubbornly against the younger kingdom of Assyria, and when it finally succumbed, had been raised to yet greater power than it had ever attained to in old times, under the brilliant reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar – which had united the branches of the Semitic stem from the Tigris to the Mediterranean, from the foot of the Armenian mountains to the deserts of Arabia – had succumbed to the attack of Cyrus after a brief existence, sixty-nine years after the fall of Nineveh. The predominance exercised for so many centuries by Semitic culture and Semitic arms through the old Babylonian, the Assyrian, and the second Babylonian kingdom, passed to a tribe of different character, language, and culture – to the Arians of Iran.

It was this violent change, which brought to a Semitic tribe liberation for its fellow Semites. The hopes of the Jews were at last fulfilled. The fall of Babylon had avenged the fall of Jerusalem, and the subjugation of Syria to the armies of Babylon opened the way for their return. Cyrus did not belie the confidence which the Jews had so eagerly offered him; without hesitation he gave the exiles permission to return and erect again their shrine at Jerusalem. The return of the captives and the foundation of a new state of the Jews was very much to his interest; it might contribute to support his empire in Syria. He did not merely count on the gratitude of the returning exiles, but as any revival of the Babylonian kingdom, or rebellion of the Syrians against the Persian empire, imperilled the existence of this community, which had not only to be established anew, but would never be very strong, it must necessarily oppose any such attempts. Forty-nine years – seven Sabbatical years, instead of the ten announced by Jeremiah – had passed since the destruction of Jerusalem, and more than sixty since Jeremiah had first announced the seventy years of servitude to Babylon. Cyrus commissioned Zerubbabel, the son of Salathiel, a grandson of Jechoniah, the king who had been carried away captive, and therefore a scion of the ancient royal race, and a descendant of David, to be the leader of the returning exiles, to establish them in their abode, and be the head of the community; 85he bade his treasurer Mithridates give out to him the sacred vessels, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away as trophies to Babylon, and placed in the temple of Bel; there are said to have been more than 5000 utensils of gold and silver, baskets, goblets, cups, knives, etc. But all the Jews in Babylon did not avail themselves of the permission. Like the Israelites deported by Sargon into Media and Assyria some 180 years previously, many of the Jews brought to Mesopotamia and Babylonia at the time of Jechoniah and Zedekiah, had found there a new home, which they preferred to the land of their fathers. But the priests (to the number of more than 3000 86), many of the families of the heads of the tribes, all who cared for the sanctuary and the old country, all in whom Jehovah "awoke the spirit," as the Book of Ezra says, began the march over the Euphrates. With Zerubbabel was Joshua, the high priest, the most distinguished among all the Jews, a grandson of the high priest Zeraiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had executed after the capture of Jerusalem. The importance of the priests had increased in the captivity; they had become the natural heads and judges of the Jews, and the people following the guidance of the prophets, had learned to regard Jehovah as their peculiar lord and king. It was a considerable multitude which left the land "beyond the stream," the waters of Babylon, to sit once more under the fig-tree in their ancient home, and build up the city of David and the temple of Jehovah from their ruins; 42,360 freemen, with 7337 Hebrew men-servants and maid-servants; their goods were carried by 435 camels, 736 horses, 250 mules, and 6720 asses (537 B.C.) 87The exodus of the Jews from Babylon is accompanied by a prophet with cries of joy, and announcements filled with the wildest hopes. Was not the fall of Babylon and the return home a sure pledge that the anger of Jehovah was appeased? Must not the dawn of that brilliant time be come, which the prophets had always pointed out behind the execution of the punishment? Could not the most joyful expectation prevail that Jehovah's grace would be greater henceforth than his anger in the past? Thus, in the spirit, the prophet saw all the scattered members of the people of Israel, who since the time of Tiglath-Pilesar II. had been carried away, or fled for refuge, return from the distant lands, from Egypt and the isles; Jerusalem has put on a new splendour which far exceeds that of old days; and therefore he gives expression to the confident expectation that the people of Jehovah will be the first nation of the earth, and the resurgent Zion will be the centre and the protector of all nations. "Go forth from Babylon," he cries; "fly from the land of the Chaldæans! Proclaim it with shouts of joy, tell it to the end of the earth and say: 'Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob.'" 88"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that publisheth peace, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth. 89Up, up, go forth, touch no unclean person; go forth from among them. Cleanse yourselves, ye that bear Jehovah's vessels. 90Ye shall go forth in joy and be led in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees shall clap their hands. 91Jehovah goes before you, and the God of Israel brings up the rear. Was it not Jehovah who made the depths of the sea to be your pathway, so that His redeemed passed through? In the desert through which they passed they thirsted not; He clave the rock and the waters flowed. 92So shall the ransomed of Jehovah return, and come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 93O, poor ones, surrounded with misery and comfortless; for a little time Jehovah left thee, but He takes thee up again with greater love, and I will have mercy on thee for ever, saith Jehovah. As I swore that the waters of Noah should not come again upon the earth, so do I swear to be angry with thee no more. The mountains may melt and tremble, but my mercy will leave thee no more. Jehovah calls thee as an outcast sorrowful woman, and thy God speaks to thee as to a bride who has been put away; 94thy ruins, and deserts, and wasted land, which was destroyed from generation to generation – thy people build up the ruins, and renew the ancient cities. 95Behold, I will make thy desert like Eden, and thy wilderness like the garden of the Lord; I will lay thy stones with bright lead, and thy foundations with sapphires, and make thy towers of rubies and thy gates of carbuncles. 96Joy and delight is in them, thanksgiving and the sound of strings. The wealth of the sea shall come to thee, and the treasures of the nations shall be thine; 97like a stream will I bring salvation upon Israel, and the treasures of the nations like an overflowing river. 98Thy sons hasten onward; those that laid thee waste go forth from thee. 99Lift up thine eyes and see; thy sons come from far, and I will gather them to those that are gathered together. The islands and the ships of Tarshish wait to bring thy children from afar, their gold and their silver with them. 100The land will be too narrow for the inhabitants; widen the place for thy tent, let the carpets of thy habitation be spread – delay not. Draw out the rope; to the right and to the left must thou be widened. 101I will set up my banner for the nations, that they bring thy sons in their arm, and thy daughters shall be carried on the shoulders. Kings shall be thy guardians, and queens thy nursing-mothers; I will bow them to the earth before thee, and they shall lick the dust of thy feet, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, and they who wait patiently for me shall not be put to shame." 102