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Hamestris with Esther. Xerxes had a son by Hamestris that was marriageable in the seventh year of his reign? And the similarity urged between the names is more than counter-balanced by the striking dissimilarity of their characters. Queen Hamestris was as much unlike Queen Esther as the name Xerxes was like the name Artaxerxes.

But how can this be, when

Usher says, Ahasuerus was Darius Hystaspes, and that Atossa, his wife, was Vashti, and Artystona was Esther. Now, if Herodotus is correct, and all the Archbishop's reliance is upon the Greek writers of Alexander's age, and following, this Artystona was a daughter of Cyrus, and could not therefore have been Esther. And again, Atossa bore several daughters and four sons to Darius, after he was king; but, according to the Bible, Vashti was divorced in the third year of the king's reign. She could hardly, therefore, have been the mother of four sons and several daughters in three years; and, moreover, Atossa retained her influence over the king to his death, and gained the crown for her son, Xerxes. Atossa then could not have been Vashti, nor Darius Hystaspes, Ahasuerus. No doubt the difficulty of fixing the identity of Ahasuerus has been enhanced from the fact that the same name has been given to two other Persian kings in the Bible-to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, in Ezra iv.: 6; and to Astyages, king of the Medes, and father of Cyaxares, Dan. ix.: 1, neither of whom can be identical with the Ahasuerus of Esther. Dr. Kitto properly concludes that the real alternative is between Xerxes the Great and Artaxerxes Longimanus; but, it seems to me, the reasons which he assigns in favor of Xerxes

are not at all satisfactory. See his Cyclo. Bib. Lit. The extent of the king's dominions, and the luxurious habits of the court, and the condition of the Hebrews, and the favor shown to them, apply equally well to either of the Persian monarchs named, so that no decisive proof can be had to this point from the internal evidences of the book of Esther. If anything can be gathered from the history of Esther at all, bearing on this point, it is in favor of Artaxerxes Longimanus, whose favor toward the Hebrews we may conclude was owing to the influence of Mordecai and Esther.

Josephus, and the apochryphal books, and the Septuagint, and, I believe, the learned generally, have agreed that this Ahasuerus was Artaxerxes Longimanus, son and successor of Xerxes. So Drs. Prideaux, Hales, Gray and many others. The reasons, briefly, in favor of this opinion, are:

1. The high authority of Josephus and of the authors who hold this opinion.

2. Though, as I have stated before, Persian chronology is but little more than a mass of confusion, if not of contradictions, still, as far as we can understand it from contemporary records, the time of Artaxerxes Longimanus is more fully in harmony with the events recorded in our history than of any other Persian king.

3. There are, it seems to me, insuperable difficulties in receiving the Xerxes of the Greeks as the husband of Esther, or of admitting any other Persian king than Artaxerxes Longimanus, as the Ahasuerus of the Bible. And yet I believe the tendency of scholars,

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at the present moment, is to make Xerxes the Great the Ahasuerus of the Megilloth Esther. The argument for Xerxes, from the reading of the name by Grotefend and Champollion, is, however, more than counterbalanced by the readings of Rawlinson and the investigations of Malcolm, which, so far as they seem to throw any light on the subject, are in favor of Artaxerxes Longimanus. It will be remembered, in this connection, also, that Ahasuerus, like Cæsar, Pharaoh, Louis or George, was common to several kings, and may be regarded as a title rather than a name.

Ahasuerus reigned from India even unto Ethiopia. So varied was the climate of Persia, and so extensive its limits, that the younger Cyrus was correct, though a little boastful, in saying to Xenophon: "My father's kingdom is so large that people perish with cold at one extremity, while they are suffocated with heat at the other." The great extent of the dominions of the Persian kings may be learned from the great numbers and the great diversities of national costumes found in their armies. Herodotus says that, in their infantry and cavalry and marine were no less than fifty-six different nations. The empire was the largest under Artaxerxes Longimanus, the Ahasuerus of the text. It was greater than that of Assyria, Chaldea, and greater than the Median. It extended as far west as Greece; north to the Euxine and Caspian, and south to the interior of Africa. Literally "from India even unto Ethiopia." Xenophon's account of the extent of the Persian empire confirms the text in a striking manner. The terms of boundary are almost identical. He says, the great and glorious kingdom of Cyrus was bounded.

by the Red Sea, and on the south by Ethiopia, and on the north by the Euxine, and on the west by Cyprus and Egypt. Cyrop. lib. viii. The time had been when the Cilicians, Egyptians, Phenicians, Syrians and the forefathers of the Persians themselves had all been subjects of Nineveh, but long before the return of the Hebrews from Babylon, Nineveh had fallen, and Assyria and Media, as separate kingdoms, had ceased to exist, and the Persian empire was supreme, from the Indus to the Hellespont, and over all Arabia and Egypt, to the heart of Africa. In the days of Daniel, we find Cyrus and Darius reigning over one hundred and twenty provinces; but it were an easy thing for the successor of Xerxes to add seven more, which would make the number of king Ahasuerus. The Russian empire, in our day, consists of fiftyfour governments, but these governments cover an area much more extensive than the one hundred and twentyseven provinces of Persia. And who can tell how many provinces Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, reigns over?

it was the city that

And now that we are "acquaint" with the king and know something of his empire, let us look at his capital and palace. Shushan the palace, according to the Septuagint, means Shushan the city. This is the Hebrew also, and is no doubt correct, for was called Shushan, and not the palace. The three great capitals of ancient Persia were Ecbatana, Babylon and Susa. It is believed that Susa is the same as Shushan, and that the Shus, or Shuster of our day, represents the Susa of the text. The name, according to some, is Pehlvi, signifying "delightful," and was

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given to the city because of its exceeding pleasantness of situation and climate. Others say the name Susa signifies "Lily," and that the city was so called, on account of the great profusion of this beautiful flower, that clothes the surrounding plains, interspersed with a great variety also of sweet scented plants. Strabo is extravagant in his descriptions of the beauty of this city—a city which he says is "most worthy to be praised." He says also that the plains around were so fertile that they produced "two hundred fold." Aristotle also refers to Susa as 66 a most wonderful city," and says, "its palace shines with gold, amber and ivory." It was the favorite residence of Cyrus, and believed to have been preferred to Babylon by all the Persian kings. Its gardens and surrounding plains were once filled with oleanders, pomegranates, dates, lemons, oranges, or covered with "golden seas of corn," while the distant view was bounded by snow-clad mountains, somewhere amongst which the remains of Noah's ark are buried. A thick forest of tamarisk, poplar and acacia, skirt the plain around the ruins, which are a cover for lions, wolves, foxes, boars, porcupines, jackals, lizards, serpents, francolins and partridges. Mr. Loftus' chapter on Susa is well worth the attention of all Biblical readers. See pages 335-348.

The early history of Susa is almost unknown to us, but it must have had a beginning, though that beginning is lost in the dim shadows of the past. From the early history of Abraham we have learned that Elam was a kingdom in his day, and it is almost certain that the kingdom of Chedorlaomer was founded by Elam the son of Shem; and from Ezra iv.: 9, we see that the