In the meantime, their masters, the Persian kings, grew worse and worse;
brother killed brother, son rose against father, and the women even
committed horrible crimes. They invented tortures too horrid to mention,
and lived between savage cruelty and vain luxury, till there was no
strength nor courage in them, and in less than 200 years from the time
that Cyrus had conquered Babylon, their realm was rotten, and their time
of ruin was come. All through this time, the Jews were chiefly ruled
by the high priests, though paying tribute to the Persian king, and
sometimes visited by the Satrap of the Province of Syria, to which
Palestine belonged.
LESSON XV.
ALEXANDER.
"Ships shall come from Chittim, and shall afflict Eber, and shall
afflict Assur."--_Num_. xxiv. 24.
Mountain lands, small islets, and peninsulas broken into by deep bays
and gulfs, rise to the northward of the east end of the Mediterranean,
and were known to the Jews as the Isles of the Gentiles. The people who
dwelt in them have been named Greeks; they were sons of Japhet, and were
the race whom God endowed, above all others, with gifts of the body and
mind, though without bestowing on them the light of His truth.
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