HISTORY.] cess against the neighbouring nations. He repaired and fortified Jerusalem, built towers in the desert, and constructed wells which remain to this day. 'He had much cattle both in the low country, and in the plains: husband men also, and vine-dressers in the mountains, and in Carmel; for he loved husbandry.' He had, moreover, a prodigious army; the officers amounted to 2600, and the men to 307,500, every common soldier having a shield, spear, helmet, haber'And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cungeon, bow, and sling. ning men, to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal. And his name spread far abroad.' But prosperity appears to have corrupted the heart of this otherwise great king; for, elated with pride, be usurped the priest's office, and offered to burn incense in the temple, 765. 'And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men: and they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, "It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary; for thou hast trespassed.' Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy rose up in his forehead. And the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and, behold, he was leprous, and they thrust him out thence; yea, himself hasted also to go out, because the Lord had smitten him.' And the king continued a leper until the day of his death, dwelling away from his palace, in a separate house; so that his son Jotham acted as regent in the kingdom for seven years, until Uzziah's decease, in 758. EVENTS. The kingdom of Lydia. This country in Asia Minor was first known in authentic history, 797, when Ardysus, one of the Heraclidæ, was its king. The Mermnadæ another branch of the Heraclidæ succeeded under Gyges, eighty years after this; and the last of them was the wealthy Croesus, whom Cyrus conquered. The Lydians were celebrated for their attention to money; remote period and coining is generally allowed to have originated at a with them. Israel under Zachariah, Menahem, like his parent, displayed no zeal for and Pekahiah. For the first twenty- the worship of the true God. In two five years of Uzziah's reign, Jero- years a conspiracy was formed against boam II. was king of Israel. Upon him by his general, Pekah, who, at the his death, there was, from some un- head of fifty men of Gilead, slew him explained cause, an interregnum of in the palace of Samaria, 759. nearly eleven years, when at length his son Zachariah was placed on the throne. Zachariah began to reign 773; but in six months was slain by his general, Shallum, who, in his turn, was assassinated in one month by a rival officer, Menahem. Menahem assumed the sovereign power 772, and, by force of arms, was at length generally acknowledged; not, however, before he had put to the sword the defenceless women and children of Tirzah, and other cities, because the people reHis second fused to support him. year was disturbed by the invasion of Belesis, the new king of Babylon; but he bribed that ambitious general to become his ally, by paying him 1000 talents of silver, which he ex- as a new institution, and denominated acted with great rigour from the Israelites, making every man of rank contribute fifty shekels. Pekahiah sucseeded his father, Menahem, 761, and The first Olympiad. Corcbus, a courier of Elis, gained a prize at the Olympic games 776; and as they had for some time been neglected, this celebration was regarded by the Greeks (although the twenty-eighth) the first Olympiad. Authentic history may be said to begin with the epoch, and mythic record to close; and for more than 1200 years after this period the | when officers called prytanes, from the system of quadriennial dating ob- prytaneum or hall where they sat, tained. supplanted the monarchs. Corinth made a Republic, 779, EMINENT PERSON. Numitor, fourteenth king of Alba, | tive; and Ilia, the spouse of Mars, began to reign conjointly with his gave birth to two sons, Romulus and brother Amulius; but the latter ex- Remus, whose lives were preserved, pelled his brother, put his (Numitor's) though exposed by the tyrant in the son Lausus to death, and consecrated river; and who, when grown to adohis (Numitor's) daughter, Ilia, to the lescence, put the cruel Amulius to service of the goddess Vesta, which death, and restored their grandfather demanded perpetual celibacy. These Numitor to his throne. great precautions were rendered abor SECTION XVII. JOTHAM, KING OF JUDAH. 758 TO 742-16 YEARS. Jotham, son of Uzziah, conducted himself with an attention, both to the advancement of his nation and to religious matters, very unusual amongst the kings of Judah. He erected a magnificent entrance-gate to the temple, founded several cities in the mountains of Judah, and built castles and towers in the forests. He made the Ammonites tributary, exacting from them yearly 100 talents of silver, 10,000 measures of wheat, and 10,000 of barley. EVENTS. Israel under Pekah. The serious flight of birds, Remus saw first from troubles of Israel began under this mount Aventine six vultures, and king, who had usurped the throne after murdering Pekahiah, 759. He was son of a captain in the arty; and in his time, Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, the successor of Phul, took Gilead, and all Galilee and Naphthali, carrying the inhabitants captive to Nineveh. A conspiracy was formed against Pekah by his general, Hoshea, who slew him, and usurped the throne, 739. Rome founded. Romulus and Remus, grandsons of Numitor, had been committed in an ark to the Tiber when infants, by order of Amulius. A shepherd saved them from the waters, brought them up, and told them the history of their birth. As Numitor was still living, they put the usurper to death, and restored him. Hereupon they resolved to found a city where they had formerly kept sheep; and seeking an omen from the Romulus soon after from mount Pa- tinus; 4. Esquilinus ; 5. Quirinalis; dom was given by a master to his 6. Viminalis; 7. Cœlus. Romulus slaves by a slap on the face, and hence enacted that twelve men called lictors was called manumission, or the sendshould walk before the king as they af- ing away by hand. In sacrifices, terwards did before the consuls within libation was the pouring upon the the city, carrying bundles of rods called ground either wine, milk, or other fasces, with an axe in the middle. liquid, as an offering to a god, espeWhen a Roman saved the life of a cially to Jupiter and Ceres. The fellow-citizen in battle he had a crown months in aftertimes were divided given him made of oak-leaves called into kalends, nones, and ides; the civic; on him who first scaled the kalends being on the first day, the wall of an enemy's city, he ordered to nones on the fifth of every month but be bestowed the mural crown, being March, May, July, and October, when one intended to imitate a castellated they were on the seventh, and the ides tower; and on the man who first on the thirteenth, excepting in the boarded an enemy's ship, the naval same four months, when they were crown, having a form like the beak of on the fifteenth; and they numbered a ship. The spot in the forum where each day, not after, but before each of the public orator's pulpit was placed these divisions. Thus the first day being ornamented with the rostra or of the month was the kalends; the beaks of ships taken from enemies, second was called the fourth before the pulpit itself obtained the name of the nones; the third the third before rostrum. The cause of the so much the nones; the fourth, pridie nona or vaunted strength and courage of the the day before the nones; the fifth, Romans must be looked for in the nonæ or the nones; the sixth, the gymnastic and other violent exercises eighth before the ides, and so on demade compulsory with the young; creasing till the twelfth or pridie idus; such as leaping in ponderous ar- the thirteenth, idus or the ides; the mour, carrying heavy weights; and fourteenth, the eighteenth before the in the gladiatorial spectacles which kalends of the next month, and so on they were compelled to witness, to decreasing till the thirtieth or thirtyinure them to the sight of wounds and first, which was called pridie kalendas. blood. The yoke of ignominy con- The Roman legion varied in number; sisted of three spears placed to form and in the time of Polybius consisted the Greek II, or modern gallows of 4200. Each legion was divided conquered troops were made to pass into ten cohorts, each cohort into three under it in token of the subjection of maniples, and each maniple into two their state. The Roman worship was centuries containing each nominally less idolatrous than that of the ancients 100 men, having a commander called in general, the people praying to their centurion. The Romans had comgods without images on most occamonly three names; prænomen, pecusions. Certain images called house- liarly that of the individual, as Marhold gods they kept for protection. cus; the generic name, implying the These were the lares, consisting of stock from which the owner sprung, as small waxen images, clothed in dog- Tullius; and the cognomen, belonging skin, and placed round the hearth in to the immediate family, and often imthe hall; and the penates, kept in the plying some peculiarity in the indivipenetralia, or innermost chambers of dual, as Cicero (with a wart, because the the house, and there worshipped on the orator had one in his face). The occasion. The ovation was an inferior ædiles were magistrates who had the kind of triumph, wherein the victor care of all buildings, baths, and aquewalked through the streets, accom- ducts, and examined the weights and panied by his officers, and preceded measures, that no false ones might be by flute-players in lieu of the more used. The prætors administered juswarlike drums and trumpets. Free- tice, and acted for the consuls in their absence. Their number like that of the | were three, between the people of ædiles varied. Era of Nabonassar. When Nabonassar was king of Babylon, the Jews, in 747, changed their mode of reckoning the year from 360 to 365 days. Their lunisolar year, as it is called, was made by taking twelve moons or months, each having thirty days. The period of alteration has been dignified with the above title. Messenian Wars. Of these there Messenia in Peloponnesus and the Spartans; the first beginning 743, and the last in 465. The Spartans conquered in the last, and exiled the people; but they were afterwards allowed to return in small numbers; and in 370 their descendants were reinstated. The ground of quarrel was the tributary state of Messenia to Lacedæmon. EMINENT PERSONS. Isaiah, the first of the four great pro- | soon after entered Rome, and attacked phets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the citizens in the forum. According Daniel) of the tribe of Judah, was re-to Ovid, the two enemies laid down lated to the legitimate line of the royal their arms, upon seeing the women family, and entered upon his prophetic rush between the armies and sue for office in the first year of Jotham's the lives of those who had now become reign, 758. From the clear and con- their husbands. The Sabine nation sistent manner in which, in language even agreed to unite more intimately of fire and sublimity, he describes the with the new city; and Tatius, its coming of the Messiah, and his attri- king, removed to Rome, to share the butes, he has been styled the evange- sovereign power with its founder. lical prophet. He continued the suc- Having thus secured the prosperity of cessful minister of God full sixty years, his nascent kingdom, Romulus brought until 698; when king Manasseh, in into subjection much of the surroundhis rage against the opponents of idol-ing country, and divided the conquered atry, commanded him to be cut in two with a wooden saw. The style of Isaiah has been universally admired as the most perfect model of the sublime: it is distinguished at once for all the magnificence and for all the euphony of the Hebrew language. Romulus having, after the death of Remus, no one to oppose his designs, employed all his energies in the assembling of subjects for his yet unpeopled state. Fugitives, and even criminals, were received with open arms; but as these were insufficient both in number and character, and as women especially were few, he, in order to attract strangers to Rome, celebrated games in honour of Consus, the god of councils, and forcibly carried away the females who had assembled to be spectators of such unusual exhibitions. These violent measures offended the Sabines, who had lost most of their young women by the deceit; whereupon a combined force lands into three portions: one for religious uses to maintain the priests, to erect temples, and to consecrate altars; the second to support the state expenses; and the last to be equally distributed amongst the people, for agricultural purposes. The whole body of his subjects consisted of two great classes, called patricians and plebeians, patron and client, who, by mutual interest, were induced to preserve peace, and to promote the public good. Amongst the patricians were 100 senators, men aged, learned, and experienced, the ministers of religion, and all such as promoted the welfare of their country by mental labour: the plebeians were all such as passed life in the exercise of the manual arts. Some time after issuing these wise ordinances, Romulus, while giving instructions to his senators, is said to have suddenly disappeared; and the eclipse of the sun, which happened at that time, was favourable to the rumour which asserted that the king had been taken up to heaven, 714, after a reign of thirty-nine years. This was further confirmed by Proculus, a senator, who solemnly declared that, as he returned from Alba, he had seen Romulus in a form above human, and that he had directed him to tell the Romans to pay him divine honours, under the name of Quirinus, and to assure them their city was doomed to become the capital of the world. PERIOD THE FOURTH. From the Foundation of Rome to the Rise of Persia. 753 To 538 B. C.-215 YEARS. SECTION I. AHAZ, KING OF JUDAH. 742 TO 726-16 YEARS. Ahaz, son of Jotham, had no sooner succeeded than he closed the temple, restored the worship of Baal, made his children go through the fire to Moloch, and burned incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree, to the idols of the Syrians. Enemies, however, began to assail him; and while Rezin, king of Syria, made an incursion, and carried thousands of his people captive to Damascus, Pekah, king of Israel, slew 120,000 of his subjects in one day, besides carrying towards Samaria no less than 200,000 men, women, and children, prisoners of war. At the intercession of the Israelitish prophet, Oded, these latter, with their property, were delivered up to Ahaz again at Jericho. Nevertheless, Ahaz applied for aid to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, who came to Jerusalem, and, under the pretence of supporting the king of Judah, forced him to give up a large portion of the treasures of the temple, and to exact money for him from the chief lords. EVENTS. Israel under Hoshea. Hoshea, upon his murder of Pekah, made alliance with the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser, as also with So, king of Egypt, who had usurped the crown, after putting to death king Boccharis. Thus strengthened, he ruled peacefully until the death of Ahaz; soon after which we shall see that Israel fell never to rise again. their government was despotic; insomuch that, in the reign of the elder Dionysius, an army of 100,000 foot, and 10,000 horse was kept in constant pay. It is said of the Syracusans, that the men were superlatively excellent when virtuous, and profoundly infamous when bad. Theocritus, the Greek poet, and Archimedes, the geometrician, were natives of Syracuse. Foundation of Syracuse. This king- Thrasybulus some time tyrannised dom, which was a portion of Sicily, over Syracuse, and then the Dyonisii, commenced with the building of the whom Timoleon expelled; and at last city so named, 732, by Archias, a Co- it fell, under the consul Marcellus, rinthian, and one of the Heraclidæ. into the hands of the Romans, 212 The people became powerful, though | B. C. |