Читать книгу Stories of the Wars of the Jews. From the Babylonish captivity, to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus онлайн

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Let us now retrace a little the course of history, to consider some events of great interest and importance which occurred at the court of Persia, between the periods of the return of the first and second bands of exiles to the land of Judea.

PRINCIPAL CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS. 536-457 b.c. b.c. Hippias banished from Athens 510 Tarquins banished from Rome 509 Xerxes invaded Greece 481

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The Jewish Maiden—The Conspiracy Discovered—Haman’s Plot—A Mourning Nation—The Golden Sceptre—The Queen’s Banquet.

Artaxerxes,[2] or, as he is termed in the Scriptures, Ahasuerus, sat on the throne of Persia. Lord of the widest kingdom which then existed upon earth—a kingdom which extended from India to Ethiopia, and comprised a hundred and twenty-seven provinces—the will of the monarch was the law to which many nations were constrained to bow. Ahasuerus possessed neither the wisdom nor the self-command requisite in one to whom power so vast is intrusted. He chose for his chief favourite and minister Haman, an Amalekite, a man of unbounded cruelty and pride, and dismissed his own queen for venturing to disobey a capricious command given to her by her husband, when he was probably under the influence of wine.