6 was gained, and the manner in which the whole Chaldæan 'supremacy was shattered by it, as at a single blow. The 'capture of Babylon in a single night, while the Babylonians B.C. 538. 'were celebrating in careless ease a luxurious feast, is the 'fixed kernel of the tradition in all its forms; and the out'line of it in the Book of Daniel stands out all the more 'boldly from the dark background, and casts a fiery glow 'upon the whole narrative.'1 That faint outline' has taken a place in the solemn imagery of the world that no doubtfulness of details can ever efface or alter. There was the sound of revelry by night' in the streets of Babylon at some high festival of Nebo or Merodach. Regardless of the dread extremity of their country and of the invading army round their walls, the whole population, through street and garden, through square and temple, were given up to the proverbial splendour and intoxication of the Babylonian feasts; music, perfumes, gold and silver plate, nothing was wanting. In the midst and chief of this was the feast of the King, whom the Hebrew tradition called Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchad'nezzar.' On this fatal night he comes out from the usual seclusion of the Eastern 2 kings, and sits in the same hall with thousands of his nobles at a scene the likeness of which, even in our modern days, can be imagined by those who have seen the state banquets of the most Oriental of European potentates on the shores of the Neva or the Mosqua. Before them is the choice wine with which, from far countries, the Babylonian tables were laden. From the Temple of Bel, where they have been treasured up since the conqueror had carried them from Jerusalem, are brought the vessels of gold and silver, the bowls and the caldrons, and the spoons, the knives, the cups, which had been regarded by the Jewish Ewald, v. 51. Compare the Greek accounts in Herod. i. 190; Xenophon, Cyrop. vii. 5 and 15. The last night of Babylon. nation as the very palladium of the State-alike the thirty chargers and thirty vases of gold which had been made for the Temple of Solomon, and had continued there till the captivity of Jehoiachin, and the thousand chargers and four hundred basins of silver by which Zedekiah had supplied their place, and which were carried away in the final deportation. Into them the wine is poured and drunk by the King, with his nobles, and with the women of his harem, who, according to the shameless custom 2 of the Babylonians, are present at the banquet. Round about are placed the images of the gods of wood and stone, of iron and brass, plated with gold and silver.3 'In that same hour came forth the fingers of a man's 'hand and wrote over against' the great candlestick which lighted up the pale stucco on the wall of the Palace, to which the banqueting hall was attached, and the King 'saw the part of the hand which wrote.' Then follows the panic of the assembled spectators as they find themselves in the presence of an enigma which they cannot decipher. 'I know,' said a great French scholar and philosopher in the Imperial Library of Paris in the winter of 1870, 'I know ' that I am turning over the leaf of a fresh page in history, but 'what is on the page I cannot read.' Such is the perplexity described when the wisdom of all the world-renowned learning of Babylon was summoned to interpret the writing, with the offer of the purple robe and golden chain of royal favour, and the next place in the kingdom after the two royal persons of the State. Then appears the venerable personage always regarded in Eastern Monarchies with especial reverence, the Queen Mother-the Sultana Validé.' In this instance the 1 Baruch i. 8; Ezra i. 8, 9. See Lecture XL. 345. 2 Curtius v. 1; Herod. i. 499. 3 Isa. xxx. 22; xliv. 13; Baruch vi. 4; Jer. x. 3-5. Esther i. 5. But see Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, 651. 5 Perhaps meaning Belshazzar and Nabunadius (Speaker's Commentary, p. 308). But, as Nabunadius is not recognised in Daniel, the Queen Mother seems more probable. respect would be enhanced if she may be identified with Nitocris,' the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, herself the architect of some of the great outworks of the city. 2 Once more, in her mouth, the all-transcending wisdom and judgment of Daniel is set forth, reviving and recalling from long seclusion, as after the manner of the East, the antique sage or statesman of the former generation to rebuke the folly of the younger. And then, like Elijah before Ahab, like Tiresias before Creon in the Grecian drama, is brought the hoary seer, with his accumulated weight of years and honours, to warn the terror-stricken King, and to read the decree of fate which no one else could interpret. Where the astrologer and the diviner had failed, true science had discovered the truth.3 Again and again have those mystic words been repeated, and will be repeated to the end of time; yet never with more significance than on the occasion whence they are derived. They were, as befitted the city which claimed to be the mother of letters, not in mere signs or hieroglyphics, but in distinct Hebrew characters; and through their brief and broken utterance there ran a double, treble significance. Mene, the first word, twice recorded, carried with it the judgments that the days of the kingdom were numbered and ended; Tekel pronounced the doom that it was weighed and found light; Peres, the third, that it was divided and given to the Persians (Pharsin)--the first appearance in history of that famous name which now, for 7 (2) In Dan. v. 25, it is And to the Persians, as though something had dropped out. In Dan. v. 28 it is Peres, divided.' Mr. Aldis Wright suggests that the original inscription ran perpendicularly, and was 'Meni, Tekel, Medi u Pharsin; and that Medi was, by reading it horizontally, mistaken for a reduplication of Meni. 6 The same word for 'division as appears in Pharisee. 7 The substitution of Phars for Elam in the Book of Daniel, which it The capture of Babylon. the first time, stepped into the place of Elam,' and has never since been lost. In that same night was Belshazzar the King slain '—so briefly and terribly is the narrative cut short in the Book of Daniel. But from the contemporary authorities, or those of the next century, we are able to fill up some of the details as they were anticipated or seen at the time. It may be that, as according to Berosus,' the end was not without a struggle; and that one or other of the kings who ruled over Babylon was killed in a hard-won fight without the walls. But the larger part of the accounts are steady to the suddenness and completeness of the shock, and all combine in assigning an important part to the great river, which, as it had been the pride of Babylon, now proved its destruction. The stratagems by which the water was diverted, first in the Gyndes and then in the Euphrates, are given partly by Herodotus and partly by Xenophon. It is their effect alone which need here be described. 'A way was made in the sea' 2-that sea-like lake— ' and a path in the mighty waters.' Chariot and horse, army and power' are, as in the battle of the Milvian bridge, lost in the dark stream to rise up no more, extinguished like a torch plunged in the waters. The hundred gates, all of bronze, along the vast circuit of the walls, the folding-doors, the two-leaved gates 5 which so carefully guarded the approaches of the Euphrates, opened as by magic for the conqueror; her waves roared like great waters, the thunder of 'their voice was uttered.' The inhabitants were caught in the midst of their orgies. The Hebrew seer trembled as he saw the revellers unconscious of their impending doom, like the Persian seer for his own countrymen before the battle of 3 has in common with all books after Jos. Ant. x. 11, §2. 2 Isa. xliii. 16. 5 Isa. xlv. 1, 2. Herod. ix. 17. 5 Platea-xoloτn odúvŋ. But it was too late. Her princes, ' and her wise men, and her captains, and her rulers, and her 'mighty men were cast into a perpetual sleep' from which they never woke. ! They succumbed without a struggle, they forbore to fight. They remained in the fastnesses of their towering houses; their might failed; they became as women, they were hewn down like the flocks of lambs, of sheep, of goats, in the shambles or at the altar.2 To and fro, in the panic of that night, the messengers encountered each other3 with the news that the city was taken at one end, before the other end knew. The bars were broken, the passages were stopped, the tall houses were in flames, the fountains were dried up by the heat of the conflagration. The conquerors, chiefly the fierce mountaineers from the Median mountains, dashed through the terrified city like wild beasts. They seemed to scent out blood for its own sake; they cared not for the splendid metals that lay in the Babylonian treasure-houses; they hunted down the fugitives as if they were chasing deer or catching runaway sheep. With their huge bows 7 they cut in pieces the young men whom they encountered; they literally fulfilled the savage wish of the Israelite captives, by seizing the infant children and hurling them against the ground, till they were torn limb from limb in the terrible havoc. A celestial sword flashes a first, a second, a third, a fourth, and yet again a fifth time, at each successive blow sweeping away the chiefs of the State, the idle boasters, the chariots, the treasures, the waters.9 The Hammer of the Nations struck again and again and again, as on the resounding anvil, and with repeated blows beat down the shepherd as he drove his flock through the wide pasture of the cultivated spaces, the |