He names not Euphrates, nor hints at any other river: He names not the King of Assyria, who is killed in the battle according to Xenophon, but by a conspiracy, as all other Authors ancient and modern hold; nor his Son and Successor, who is killed in taking Babylon: yet these were real persons, and why should he not have named them if he knew their names? whereas he doth relate different things about them from what other Authors have related;-Nor the King of Armenia, though he names his two sons, nor even the daughter of Cyaxares that married Cyrus. Yet he affects to name much less considerble Princes and Persons of his own invention. He names Cyaxares, whom Vignoles and others think no real person; and why might he not as well have named his daughter, or even the King of the Armenians? His Abradatas could not be as he makes him king of Susiana, and of the Assyrian side; for it appears by Strabo, that Susiana belonged to the Medes. He distinguishes no years; and it looks like one campaign till that of the siege of Babylon: Yet in the history of the younger Cyrus nobody is more exact in particulars. The Author of Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks explained observes, Part ii. p. 41, that he gives some of his imaginary persons Greek names; but he had observed, p. 30, from Plato, that the Greeks were fond of doing this even in real persons when there was any affinity. 66 Besides, Xenophon elsewhere owns that the Persians took the empire by war from the Medes*: From whence it should seem to follow, that he did not aim at historical Truth in the Cyropædia. As he must have known the bistory of Herodotus, it is much he should neither have followed, nor intimated that he did not follow him. But this is a good deal stranger, if he meant his book to be taken for a reality, than if he designed it for a fiction †. Isocrates contemporary with Xenophon, and I believe older, *The Archbishop here alludes to places mentioned in his Notes at Chap. ii. p. 39. + See Vignoles, p. 560. saith, that Cyrus overcame the Medes with a Persian army, and translated the dominion to the latter, and put his mother's father to death. Euag. p. 86, 87, Ed. Batti. Wolfius in his Note saith, that Isocrates affirms this as an orator, map' iσropiay. By what Cicero cites from Dionysius παρ' ιστορίαν. or rather Dino, who wrote a Persian History soon after. Ctesias, Cyrus was forty when he began to reign, and reigned thirty years. Now we have no account that Astyages was married till just before he was King; and Herodotus saith, he had Mandane Cyrus's mother after he was King; and he reigned but thirty-five years. Besides according to Herodotus he was yepov when Cyrus was born, and yet lived to fight Cyrus forty years after. Some pretend therefore that the number forty should be twenty: But it is not likely a private person of twenty should have credit enough to engage the Persians to rebel under his conduct: Nor on the other hand is it likely that an old man of seventy should propose a match to the Queen of Scythia, and make war in person on her refusal. Ctesias writing at the Court of Persia must know if Cyrus was Grandson of Astyages, and would scarce have denied it, “All old Historians and Chronologers make Cyrus King of Persia: And all that enter into particulars make him so before he overcame Croesus, and some before he overcame Astyages. Xenophon in the younger Cyrus must mean the elder Cyrus by the King of Persia who dissolved the empire of the Medes. But in the Cyropædia Cambyses was living till after Cyrus had taken Babylon. Herodotus ascribes to him twenty-nine years' reign: Sulp. Sev. thirtyone, but all other Ancients thirty. He must have overcome Astyages in his tenth year; whether he overcame Croesus, or took Babylon first, is not so certain. But all Authors, so far as I find, place both these things after his victory over Astyages. Cyrus is called by Queen Tomyris, King of the Medes. Isaiah mentions not Persia, but Media and Elam in the siege of Babylon. Jeremiah mentions no name of Persia; but he mentions the Kings of the Medes, Chap. li. 11, 28, Perhaps it should be King. Ezekiel, however, mentions Persia, Chap. xxvii. 10, in speaking of the siege of Tyre. Thucydides calls the Persians Medes almost constantly. Vignoles, p. 557, thinks, if two Kings are meant by Jeremiah, Cyrus and Astyages are meant ; which last even according to Ctesias was always honoured by Cyrus as his father. There might also have been petty kings, such as Jeremiah, Chap. xxv, reckons several in a state; where, verse 25, he mentions all the Kings of the Medes and all the Kings of Elam: Only if these were subject to one great King, it is much that he had not mentioned him. "But if Astyages was one of the Median Kings that besieged Babylon, why may not Astyages be Darius * the Mede? The history of Bel saith, Astyages was gathered to his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom: which appears by what follows to be the kingdom of Baby lon. Ctesias and Justin indeed dispose of Astyages otherwise, by giving him a government in Hyrcania. "As Cyrus is called in Scripture the Shepherd and Anointed of God, who should accomplish his pleasure; so Nebuchadnezzar is called God's Servant whom he had sent. That Astyages could not be Darius the successor of Nabonadius is evident from this one consideration of his age, for he is said by Herodotus (see before, p. xxi.) to have been an old man when Cyrus was born; but Darius was only sixtytwo years old at the capture of Babylon. Dan. v. 31, and Cyrus was probably not much short of that age at the same time, as it happened certainly not more than nine years before his death according to the Canon, and he is thought to have reached the age of seventy. But Mr. Jackson thinks, see Chron. Vol. I., that Astyages succeeded to the kingdom of Babylon before Nabonadius, and that we should place the reign of Darius the Mede before the seventeen years of this last Monarch, whom he considers as a subordinate Ruler appointed by Astyages. And in order to obviate another difficulty which will here of necessity arise, he will have Laborosoarchod to be Belshazzar, who he thinks was destroyed, not at the final taking of Babylon by Cyrus, but when it was taken before by Astyages. But there are many objections to this opinion, of which shall mention only one, which appears to me to be insuperable: And this is, that Daniel had the Vision of Chapter viii. in the third year of Belshazzar; whereas Laborosoarchod reigned not one whole year, as Mr. Jackson allows; and the proposal of an alteration in the original text both at the seventh and eighth Chapters, and the substitution of Darius the Mede for Belshazzar in both places, is too arbitrary to be allowed on the authority only of the Paschal Chronicle. See also on Chapter v. 26. "Josephus and the first Christians all thought the Captivity ended the first year Cyrus was King of Persia, whereas he then had not Babylon in his power. The Rabbins thought it was in the first year of his reign at Babylon, but that he reigned only three there, since the Scripture names no more; and Scaliger and Calvisius thought the same; But the Canon, which they knew, should have taught them that he reigned nine years over Babylon. 66 Josephus saith, Cyrus knew Isaiah's Prophecy concerning him, and certainly Daniel had opportunities of showing it to him; at least he saith in his edict, that God had commanded him to build the Temple: So that he must have known it then." IT would be in vain perhaps to attempt to reconcile all the various accounts of Writers on this subject. There might have been many Princes of the name of Cyrus*: We know of two, one of which died in battle, and the other probably in peace. The different accounts of these different Princes might have been improperly applied to each, and have thereby occasioned sundry errors, which it must now be impossible entirely to rectify. However the two leading accounts that affect the subject on which we are now engaged are those of Herodotus and Xenophon; and it must be confessed that from the authorities collected by the Archbishop, the weight of the argument evidently lies against the Cyropædia. But still there are many circumstances of importance that may be thrown in the opposite scale, and which may contribute in this instance to shake the faith of Herodotus: Such are the general belief that Cyrus was buried in Pasargadat, in Persia, and therefore could not have been * Bishop Lowth speaking of the Cyrus of Herodotus says, "he was a very different Character from that of the Cyrus of the Scriptures and Xenophon." Isa. Notes, p. 86. + Passargadas castellum, in quo Cyri sepulchrum est. Plin. Nat. Hist. P. 100. killed in Scythia by Tomyris; that however Xenophon may be conceived as drawing a Character beyond the Life, yet his whole life, education, and conduct, must convince us that he would not knowingly and intentionally relate direct falsehoods; that Herodotus probably in the course of his travels took many things upon trust, according to general rumour, preferring the opinions that appeared to him the most probable*; and that although both were Greeks, the one an Athenian, and the other born at Halicarnassus, in Caria, yet Xenophon who had resided in Persia had probably far better opportunities of information in Persic History than the other; and many of the embellishments of Xenophon seem to have been founded upon real facts, and all have Truth and Morality for their Design or End; and that he who should amplify and adorn Truth for the sake of advancing and improving Philosophy, could never mean so far to disparage it as to shake and overturn the faith of History; that in his account of the younger Cyrus Xenophon is the historian of his own times, relates events, quæque ipse miserrima vidit, Et quorum pars magna fuit, EN. ii. and therefore his narrative must be more exact and circumstantial than the history of foreign facts and characters near a century and a half before†. To this To this may be added, that Jerom not only asserts that the Cyaxares of Xeno See the Note at p. xviii. There is a very sensible and judicious Essay on this subject in the Memoires de Literature de l'Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, à Paris 1729. tom. vi. p. 400, by the Abbé Banier, from which I have extracted the following Remarks.-Je ne crois pas d'abord que Xenophon n'ait eu d'autres vûes que d'ecrire l'histoire de Cyrus. Philosophe, comme il étoit, aussi bien que grand capitaine, il conçût un plus grand dessein. Il voulut apprendre aux Princes de son temps et à la posterite l'art de regner, et de se faire aimer malgré l' autorité souveraine. La morale et la politique de Socrate lui parurent propres à executer son dessein, et il chercha à en placer les preceptes dans un corps d'histoire. C'est le sentiment d'Aulu-gelle, qui dit que ce Philosophe ayant lû les deux premiers livres de la Republique de Platon, qui parurent avant que l'ouvrage fût achevé, travailla à sa Cyropedie; opposant ainsi la Monarchie à l'Etat republican.-Ce |