A posthumous essay of Mr John Stuart Mill contains a full philosophical exposition and defence of this mode of regarding the relations of Nature and Art. Defining Nature as above, and again as a “collective name for all facts, actual and possible,” that writer proceeds to say that such a definition—· "Is evidently inapplicable to some of the modes in which the word is familiarly employed. For example, it entirely conflicts with the common form of speech by which Nature is opposed to Art, and natural to artificial. For in the sense of the word Nature which has thus been defined, and which is the true scientific sense, Art is as much Nature as anything else; and everything which is artificial is natural—Art has no independent powers of its own: Art is but the employment of the powers of Nature for an end. Phenomena produced by human agency, no less than those which, as far as we are concerned, are spontaneous, depend on the properties of the elementary forces, or of the elementary substances and their compounds. The united powers of the whole human race could not create a new property of matter in general, or of any one of its species. We can only take advantage for our purposes of the properties we find. A ship floats by the same laws of specific gravity and equilibrium as a tree uprooted by the wind and blown into the water. The corn which men raise for food, grows and produces its grain by the same laws of vegetation by which the wild rosé and the mountain strawberry bring forth their flowers and fruit. A house stands and holds together by the natural properties, the weight and cohesion of the materials which compose it. A steam engine works by the natural expansive force of steam, exerting a pressure upon one part of a system of arrangements, which pressure, by the mechanical properties of the lever, is transferred from that to another part, where it raises the weight or removes the obstacle brought into connection with it. In these and all other artificial operations the office of man is, as has often been remarked, a very limited one; it consists of moving things into certain places. W e move objects, and by doing this, bring some things into contact which were separate, or separate others which were in contact; and by this simple change of place, natural forces previously dormant are called into action, and produce the desired effect. Even the volition which designs, the intelligence which contrives, and the muscular force which executes these movements, are themselves powers of Nature.”

Another mode of thought, in some sort complementary to the last, is based on the analogy which the operations of forces external to a man bear to the operations of man himself. Study, forethought, and exertion are assigned to Nature, and her operations are called operations of Art. This view was familiar to ancient systems of philosophy, and especially to that of the Stoics. According to the report of Cicero, Nature as conceived by Zeno was a fire, and at the same time a voluntary agent having the power or art of creating things with regularity and design (naturam esse ignem artificiosum ad gignendum progredientem via). To this fire not merely creative force and systematic action were ascribed, but actual personality. Nature was “non artificiosa solum, sed plane artifex.” “That which in the works of human art is done by hands, is done with much greater art by Nature, that is, by a fire which exercises an art and is the teacher of other arts.” This conception of Nature as an all-generating fire, and at the same time as a personal artist both teaching and including in her own activity all the human arts, on the one hand may be said, with Polixenes and Mr Mill, to merge Art in Nature; but on the other hand it finds the essence of Nature in the resemblance of her operations to those of Art. “It is the proprium of art,” according to the same system, “to create and beget,” and the reasoning proceeds—Nature creates and begets, therefore Nature is an artist or Demiurgus.

But these modes of thought by which Art is included under Nature, or Nature identified with Art, or both at once, are exceptional. In ordinary use the two conceptions, each of them somewhat vague and inexact, are antithetical. Their antithesis was what Dr Johnson had chiefly in his mind when he defined Art as “the power of doing something which is not taught by Nature or by instinct.” But this definition is insufficient, because the abstract word Art, whether used of all arts at once or of one at a time, is a name not only for the power of doing something, but for the exercise of the power; and not only for the exercise of the power, but for the rules according to which it is exercised; and not only for the rules, but for the result. Painting, for instance, is an art, and the idea includes not only the power, to paint, but the act of painting; and not only the act, but the laws for performing the act rightly; and not only all these, but the material consequences of the act or the thing painted. So of agriculture, navigation, and the rest. Exception might also be taken to Dr Johnson’s definition on the ground that it excludes all actions of instinct from the genus Art, whereas usage has in more languages than one given the name of Art to several of those ingenuities in the lower animals which popular theory at the same time declares to be instinctive. Dante, for instance, speaks of boughs shaken by the wind, but not so violently as to make the birds forego their Art,—

“Non perδ dal lor esser dritto sparto Tanto, ehe gl’augelletti per lor cime Lasciasser <Γoperar ogni lor arte.”

And Fontenelle, speaking the language not of poetry but of science :—“Most animals—as, for instance, bees, spiders, and beavers—have a kind of art peculiar to themselves; but each race of animals has no more than one art, and this one has had no first inventor among the race. Man, on the other hand, has an infinity of different arts which were not born with his race, and of which the glory is his own.” Dr John-son might reply that those properties of variety and of originality or individual invention, which Fontenelle himself alleges in the ingenuities of man but not in those of the lower animals, are sufficient to make a generic difference, and to establish the impropriety of calling a honeycomb or a spider’s web a work of Art. It is not our purpose to trespass on ground so debateable as that of the nature of consciousness in the lower animals. Enough that when we use the term Art of any action, it is because we are thinking of properties in the action from which we infer, whether justly or not, that the agent voluntarily and designedly puts forth skill for known ends and by regular and uniform methods. If, then, we were called upon to frame a general definition of Art, leaving room for every accepted usage of the word, it would run thus :— Every regulated operation or dexterity by which organised beings pursue ends which they know beforehand, together with the rules and the result of every such operation or dexterity.

Here it will be well to consider very briefly the natural history of the name which has been given to this very comprehensive conception by the principal branches of civilised mankind. Our own word Art the English language has taken, as all the Romance languages of modern Europe have taken theirs, directly from the Latin. The Latin ars proceeds from a root the primitive force of which is open to question. One distinguished philologist thinks that this syllable AR, in that root from which ars is descended, means to plough, and is the same as appears in the Greek àp-ovv, ap-oτpov, âp-ovpa, and Latin ar-are, ar-atrum, arvum,. “As agriculture was the principal labour in that early state of society when we must have supposed most of our Aryan words to have been formed and applied to their definite meanings, we may well understand how a word which originally meant this special kind of labour was afterwards used to signify labour in general And as ploughing was not only one of the earliest kinds of labour, but also one of the most primitive arts, I have no doubt that the Latin ars, artis, and our own word art, meant originally the art of all arts, first taught by the goddess of all wisdom, the art of cultivating the land.”— (Max Miiller, Leet, on Science of Language, i. 294.) The more common supposition refers the word to a root AR, of which the primitive signification will have been to put or fit two tilings together, and which is to be found in a large family of Greek words, such as άράρ-ι,σκε, aρ-μεvoς, ap-θpov, aρ-t,θμoς, àp -τνω, κ.τ.λ. As a question of historical probability, the latter account seems the likelier, inasmuch as predatory and nomadic man was certainly in possession of many dexterities, as that of fitting a stone arrow-head to its shaft,—or say, that of putting two and two together,— from which, rather than from the later invention of agriculture, the group of human dexterities in general is likely to have received its name.

The Greek τεχyη, the name both for arts in the particular and art in the abstract, is by its root related both to τcκ-τωv and τεκ-vov, and thus contains the allied ideas of making and begetting. The proprium, of art in the logic of the Stoics “to create and beget” (see above) was strictly in accordance with this etymology.

The Teutonic Kunst is formed from können, and können is developed from a primitive Ich kann. In kann philology recognises a preterite form of a lost verb, of which we find the traces in Kin-d, a child; and the form Ich kann, thus meaning originally “I begot,” contains the germ of the two several developments,— können, “ to be master,” “to be able,” and kennen, “to know.”

Putting by, then, as too doubtful the etymology of ars from ploughing, we see that the chief Aryan languages have with one consent extended a name for the most elementary exercise of a constructive or productive power, till that name has covered the whole province of the skilled and deliberate operations of sentient beings.

In proportion as men left out of sight the idea of creation, of constructing or producing, “artificiosum esse ad gignendum,” which is the primitive half of this extended notion, and attended only to the idea of skill, of proceeding by regular and disciplined methods, “progredi via,” which is the superadded half, the whole notion Art, and the name for it, might become subject to a process of thought which, if analysed, would be like this :—What is done by regular and disciplined methods is Art; facts are observed and classified, and a systematic view of the order of the universe obtained, by regular and disciplined methods; the observing and classifying of facts, and obtaining a systematic view of the order of the universe, is therefore Art. To a partial extent this did unconsciously take place. Science, of which the essence is only in knowledge and contemplation, came to be spoken of as Art, of which the essence is all in practice and production. Cicero, notwithstanding his citation of the Stoical dictum that practice and production were of the essence of Art, elsewhere divides Art into two kinds—one by which things are only contemplated in the mind, another by which something is produced and done. (“Quumque artium aliud eiusmodi sit, ut tantummodo rem cernat; aliud, ut moliatur aliquid et faciat.”— Λcad. ii. 7.) Of the former kind his instance is geometry; of the latter the art of the violin player. Now geometry, understanding by geometry an acquisition of the mind, that is, a collected body of observations and deductions concerning the properties of space and magnitude, is a science and not an art; although there is an art of the geometer, which is the skill by which he solves any given problem in his science, and the rules of that skill, and his exertion in putting it forth. And so every science has its instrumental art or practical discipline; and in as far as the word Art is used only of the practical discipline or dexterity of the geometer, the astronomer, the logician, the grammarian, or other person whose business it is to collect and classify facts for contemplation, in so far the usage is just. The same justification may be extended to another usage, whereby in Latin, and some of its derivative languages, the name Art came to be transferred in a concrete sense to the body of rules, the written code or manual, which lays down the discipline and regulates the dexterity; as ars grammatica, ars rhetorica, and the rest. But when the word is stretched so as to mean the sciences themselves as acquisitions of the mind, that meaning is illegitimate. Whether or not Cicero, in the passage above quoted, had in his mind the science of geometry as a collected body of observations and deductions, it is certain that the Ciceronian phrase of the liberal arts, the ingenuozιs arts, both in Latin and its derivatives or translations in modern speech, has been used currently to denote the sciences themselves, and not merely the disciplines instrumental to them. The trivium and the quadrivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric—geometry, astronomy, music, and arithmetic) have been habitually called arts, when some of them have been named in that sense in which they mean not arts but sciences, “only contemplating things in the mind?’ In the German language particularly the words Art and Science have in general been loosely interchanged. The etymology of the word for Art secured a long continuance for this ambiguity. Kunst was employed indiscriminately in both the senses of the primitive Ich kann, to signify what I know, or Science, and what I can do, or Art. It was not till the end of the 17th century that a separate word for Science, the modern Wissenschaft, came into use. On the other hand, the Greek word τeχyη, with its distinct suggestion of the root signification to make or get, acted probably as a safeguard against this tendency. The distinction between τcχyη, Art or practice, and eπurrημη, knowledge or Science, is observed, though not systematically, in Greek philosophy. But for our present purpose, that of making clear the true relation between the one conception and the other, further quotation is rendered superfluous by the discussion the subject has received at the hands of the modern writer already quoted. Between Art, of which we. practise the rules, and Science, of which we entertain the doctrines, Mr Mill establishes the difference in the simplest shape, by pointing out that one grammatical mood is proper for the conclusions of Science, and another for those of Art. Science enunciates her conclusions in the indicative mood, whereas “the imperative is the characteristic of Art, as distinguished from Science.” And as Art utters her conclusions in her own form, so she supplies the substance of her own major premise.

“Every art has one first principle, or general major premise, not borrowed from science, that which enunciates the object aimed at, and affirms it to be a desirable object. The builder’s art assumes that it is desirable to have buildings; architecture (as one of the fine aids) that it is desirable to have them beautiful and imposing. The hygienic and medical arts assume, the one that the preservation of health, the other that the cure of disease, are fitting and desirable ends. These are not propositions of science. Propositions of science assert a matter of fact—an existence, a co-existence, a succession, or a resemblance. The propositions now spoken of do not assert that anything is, but enjoin or recommend that something should be. They are a class by themselves. A proposition of which the predicate is expressed by the words ought or should be is generically different from one which is expressed by is or will be."

And the logical relation of Art and Science, in other words, the manner of framing the intermediate member between the general major premise of Art and its imperative conclusion, is thus defined :—

“The Art [in any given case] proposes to itself an end to be attained, defines the end, and hands it over to the Science. The Science receives it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to Art with a theorem of the causes and combinations by which it could be produced. Art then examines these combinations of circumstances, and according as any of them are or are not in human power, pronounces the end attainable or not. The only one of the premises, therefore, which Art supplies, is the original major premise, which asserts that the attainment of the given end is desirable. Science, then, lends to Art the proposition (obtained by a series of inductions or deductions) that the performance of certain actions will attain the end. From these premises Art concludes that the performance of these actions is desirable, and finding it also practicable, converts the theorem into a rule or precept The grounds, then, of every rule of

Art are to be found in the theorems of Science. An Art, or a body of Art, consists of the rules, together with as much of the speculative propositions as comprises the justification of these rules. The complete Art of any matter includes a selection of such a portion from the Science as is necessary to show on what conditions the effects, which the Art aims at producing, depend. And Art in general consists of the truths of Science arranged in the most convenient order for practice, instead of the order which is most convenient for thought. Science groups and arranges its truths so as to enable us to take in at one view as much as possible of the general order of the universe....

It is known that throne-names, or names appropriated to royalty, were in use among the Persians as among other Eastern nations (cf. Heeren, Ideen, i. pp. 138, 401; Baehr’s Ctesias, p. 195). Thus the great Cyrus is said to have been called Agradatus before his accession to the throne. The second and third Darius had both also private names, the one Ochus, and the other Codomannus. To the class of royal names belongs the name Artaxerxes. To this use its significance is alone suitable, and in the earliest times, at least, it is not found appropriated by any save either the possessors of, or the pretenders to, royalty. In regard to the most of those about to be mentioned, we have express testimony that they took this name only when they ascended the throne.

It will be convenient first to mention the Achaemenian kings thus designated in the Greek historians and the old Persian inscriptions, and then consider the questions connected with the identification of these with the kings of this name occurring in Scripture.

1. Artaxerxes, surnamed Μακρόχειρ, or Longimanus (by Persian authors, Diraz-dest), the long-handed, so called, says Plutarch (Vita Artax., i.), because his right hand was longer than his left, or perhaps (see Malcolm, Hist, of Persia, i. p. 66) the long-armed (cf. Edward Longshanks), was the son of the famous Xerxes, the invader of Greece, and succeeded his father in 465 b.c. According to Josephus (Ant. Jud., xi. 6, 1), he was originally called Cyrus. His reign was marked by the revolt of Egypt under Inarus, in which the Athenians were abettors of the Egyptians, and which was quelled by the Persian general Megabyzus, in 455 b.c.; and by the ratification of the peace of Callias with Athens in 449 b.c. Of the architectural and inscribed remains of the ancient Persian empire very little is recognisable as due to this king. He is recorded in an inscription by his grandson, the next Artaxerxes, as the repairer (?) of the palace at Susa (Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana, p. 372; Norris, Jour. Asiat. Soc., xv. pp. 157-162). There is extant a fragmentary inscription in old Persian, with an Assyrian translation, which seems to have proceeded from him; and a legend upon a vase at Venice, of Egyptian origin, which reads “Artaxerxes the great king,” may with considerable assurance be also referred to this monarch (Oppert, op. cit. pp. 288-290). Artaxerxes died in 425 b.c. after a reign of forty years.

2. The next sovereign that falls to be noticed here was the grandson of the preceding, and the son of the intermediate monarch, Darius Nothus. His original and private name was Arsaces, and he assumed that of Artaxerxes on ascending the throne (Ctesias, Exc. Pers. § 57; Plutarch, Vita Artax., c. 2). The date of his accession is 405 b.c. It is this Artaxerxes, commonly surnamed Mnemon, from the retentiveness of his memory, whose reign was distinguished by the attempt of his brother, the younger Cyrus, to gain possession of the crown, and by the victory of Cunaxa 401 B.c., the death of Cyrus, and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, immortalised by Xenophon. Other prominent events of this reign were the peace of Antalcidas in 399 b.c., and the Cyprian revolt, with the defeat of Evagoras its leader, about 380 b.c. Artaxerxes Mnemon died in 359 B,c., after a reign of forty-six years, The Greek sources for this reign are comparatively abundant. Besides Xenophon, Ctesias, Diodorus, and others, Plutarch has furnished a special life of this monarch. The only native memorial of his reign is the inscription already referred to, found at Susa on the bases of pillars belonging to the royal residence there, which runs thus :—“Says Artaxerxes, the great King, the King of Kings, the King of the countries, the King of this earth, the son of King Darius; Darius was the son of King Artaxerxes, Artaxerxes was the son of Xerxes, Xerxes was the son of King Darius, Darius was the son of Hystaspes, the Achaemenian. Darius, my ancestor, built this temple (or edifice), and afterwards it was repaired (?) by Artaxerxes, my grandfather. By the help of Ahuramazda I placed Anahita and Mithra in this temple. May Ahuramazda, Anahita, and Mithra protect me.” (See Norris in Loftus, op. cit. p. 372; Jour. Asiat. Soc., xv. p. 159; Spiegel, op. cit. p. 65.) The inscription, compared with earlier texts, shows a certain negligence of style, and is interesting for the prominence, unparalleled in previous records, given to the worship of the subordinate deities Anahita, or Tanaitis, and Mithra.

3. This sovereign was succeeded by his son Ochus, who, on securing the crown, took the same royal name, and is usually known as Artaxerxes Ochus. The commencement of his reign was marked by numerous formidable revolts throughout the western provinces of the empire, which, however, were vigorously repressed, and after the re-subjugation of the revolted countries, the power of the empire was advanced to an extent and to an apparent stability unequalled since the time of the great Darius. This Artaxerxes perished by poison in 338 B.C. He is known as the builder of one of the palatial structures which stood on the platform of Persepolis; and an inscription proceeding from him (wrongly ascribed to the previous Artaxerxes by Benfey, 'Die persischen Keilinschriften, p. 67) has been found there, marked, like that already spoken of, and to a greater degree, by defects of style, and presenting his genealogy in entire accordance with the preceding. (See Rawlinson, op. cit. x. p. 341; Oppert, op. cit. p. 297; Spiegel, op. cit. p. 67.)

4. We find yet another instance in the classical writers of the use of Artaxerxes as a royal name during the Achaemenian period. After Darius Codomannus, the successor of Artaxerxes Ochus, had been finally and decisively defeated by Alexander at Arbela, he was, while fleeing before the conqueror, traitorously slain by Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, who thereupon, we are told, “assumed the upright tiara and the royal robe, and the name Artaxerxes instead of Bessus, proclaiming himself king of Asia” (Arrian, Exp. Alex., iii. 25, 3, cf. Curtius, vi. 6,13).

Such are the Achaemenian kings known to the classical writers by the name Artaxerxes. But the name also occurs in the Scriptural books of Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as in some of the Apocryphal books, and in Josephus; and it remains to be considered whether the persons there referred to are to be identified with any of the kings now mentioned, and if so, with whom 1 In the book of Nehemiah, Artaxerxes, king of Persia, appears as the monarch to whom Nehemiah acted as cup-bearer (L 2), from whom he received a commission, in the twentieth year of the king, to rebuild the wall and other ruined edifices in Jerusalem (it 1 ), and whose thirty-second year is also mentioned (v. 14, xiii. 6). In attempting to identify this Artaxerxes with one of those above named, our choice is at once limited by the length of his reign to those surnamed Longimanus and Mnemon. A sufficient proof that it is the former of these who is meant, is found in the genealogy of Eliashib, the high priest when Nehemiah came to Jerusalem (Neh. iii 1, and xiL 10). For Eliashib was the grandson of Jeshua, and Jeshua was high priest when Zerubbabel led the first company of returned exiles to Judah, in the days of Cyrus (Ezra ii. 2, iii. 2). Now, the reign of Cyrus dates from 536 B.c.; and from this to the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, or 445 b.c., is a period of ninety-one years, leaving room for precisely three generations. The opinion, which is the common one, that the Artaxerxes of Nehemiah is Artaxerxes Longimanus, is thus fully warranted (though some, as De Saulcy, Sept siècles de V histoire judaïque, p. 28, identify him with Artaxerxes Mnemon), and this enables us to proceed with confidence when inquiring into the reference of the name as it occurs in the book of Ezra. Ezra was contemporary with Nehemiah (Neh. viii. 1), and mention is made in his book of an Artaxerxes who was his own contemporary (Ezra vii. 1, 7, 11; viii 1), in whose seventh year a decree was issued, giving authority to Ezra to levy whatever supplies were needful for the service of the temple at Jerusalem. This, therefore, must have been also Artaxerxes Longimanus, and the year referred to is 458 b.c. Hence, also, when it is said (Ezra vi. 14) that “the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered, . . . according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia,” it may without difficulty be understood that the same monarch is here named, the writer singling out the three kings who, of all the Persian monarchs, distinguished themselves by the favour shov.n to the Jews.

The name occurs again in an earlier part of the same book, chapter iv. In verse 5 of that chapter mention is made of efforts of the enemies of the Jews to hinder the rebuilding of the temple, put forth “all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia.” Then in the two succeeding verses Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes are specified as kings in whose reigns representations adverse to the Jews were made at the court of Persia; and after the detailed accounts of the second of these representations, and its success with Artaxerxes, it is said (ver. 24), “Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem. So it ceased unto the second year of Darius, king of Persia.” The narrative has all the appearance of consecutive history, and the natural interpretation obviously is that the two kings, Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes, intervened between Cyrus and Darius. It is true, mention is made in the memorial presented to king Artaxerxes of the building of the city and the walls, rather than of the temple, the rebuilding of which was at the time the great enterprise of the returned exiles; but this may be easily accounted for, from the interest of the writers to make out the strongest possible case at the Persian court. Besides, it is impossible to believe that the city and its walls remained utterly desolate as the Chaldeans had left them while the temple was being rebuilt. There is, indeed, express testimony to the contrary. Notice is taken of the ‘‘ ceiled houses” of Jerusalem at this period (Haggai i. 4). Mention is also made of a “wall” of defence for its inhabitants (Ezra ix. 9), and Josephus (Ant. Jud., xi. 4, 4) records the “strong walls about the city” while the temple was still unfinished. It has indeed been argued, and that quite reasonably, that the wall mentioned in Nehemiah i. 3, which was reported to Nehemiah as “broken down,” is that to which reference is made in the passages just cited from Ezra and Josephus, built by the first colony of returned Jews, and not that destroyed by the Chaldeans nearly a century and a half before (see Kitto’s Cyclopoedia, article “Ahasuerus ”). There seems, therefore, to be nothing in the narrative to hinder the two kings to whom it relates, and whom it places between Cyrus and Darius, from being identified with the two kings who did actually intervene between these monarchs, viz., Cambyses and the pseudo-Smerdis; and this is the view which is taken of the matter by the great majority of interpreters. The difference in the names, however, presents a difficulty which to not a few has appeared insuperable, and from which escape has been sought in various ways. Some, as Scaliger, Hottinger, Mill, believing that Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes in Ezra iv. 6, 7, mean Xerxes and Artaxerxes Longimanus, suppose also that Darius in chapters iv. 24,vi.l, &c., means the successor of the latter, viz., Darius Nothus. But the identification of the Darius with the well-known Darius Hystaspes is sustained by so overwhelming evidence (see Darius), that this opinion may be at once and without hesitation rejected. Others, as Howes (see Pictorial Biblt on Ezra iv.), Biley (Jour. Sac. Literature, July 1866), and many Germans,—as Kleinert, Schultz, Hengstenberg, Au-berlen, Vaihinger, Bertheau, Keil, <kc.,—believe that the paragraph, Ezraiv. 6-23, forms an interpolation or episode, in which the chronicler has summed up the attempts of the adversaries of Judah to hinder the building of the temple, as well as what they did for the obstructing of the building of the city under Xerxes and Artaxerxes, in order to bring together in a compendious way all their machinations against the Jews (see Keil, ad locj) It is impossible, however, to reconcile this view satisfactorily with the language of the narrative, especially of ver. 24, the plain meaning of which is that the interruption in the work of the house of God caused by the decree of the king named Artaxerxes con·

tinued until, and hence was previous to, the second year of king Darius. Some German expositors, indeed, as Herzfeld (Gesek, d. Volkes lsr. i. 303), Merx, Schrader, <kc., admit the irreconcilability, and, believing that the two kings in question were Xerxes and his son, maintain that the compiler of the book of Ezra was guilty of a mistake in,referring the documents cited to the period preceding, instead of to the period subsequent to, the reign of Darius. But, apart from all questions about inspiration, this must be condemned as an illegitimate procedure. Our only original witness to the events connected with the return of the Jewish exiles is the book of Ezra, and it is not permissible to alter its testimony, or to set it aside as erroneous, because it presents some appearances of discrepancy with what is otherwise ascertained. It is to be added that the Apocryphal 1st Esdras, in the version which it gives of the same events, refers them and the king Artaxerxes to the period intervening between Cyrus and Darius (Esdras ii. 16-30, V. 72, 73), and that Josephus also in so far agrees that he assigns the events to the same period, though making no mention of Artaxerxes, and naming Cambyses a» the king by whom the work at Jerusalem was hindered (Ant. Jud., xi. 2).

Retaining, therefore, the more common view, and identifying the Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes of Ezra iv. with Cambyses and the pseudo-Smerdis, it remains to be considered if the difference in the names presents any insuperable, or even any serious, objection. Confining the discussion to the subject of the present article (for the otter name see Ahasuerus), it has been already abundantly evinced that Artaxerxes is a regal name, and was assumed by all who are certainly known to have borne it, in addition to their private and personal designation, on their accession to the regal power. There is no difficulty in supposing that the Magian Gomates, when, in the absence of Cambyses on his Egyptian expedition, he personated Bardiya or Smerdis, the younger son of Cyrus, and usurped the throne, assumed also, like the later usurper Bessus, this as his official name, under which, of course, the public decrees of his administration would be couched, and which would naturally be most current among those who, like the Jews, belonged to the foreign subjects of the Persian monarchy (cf. Tyrwhitt, Esther and Ahasuerus, p. 333). Nor are we destitute of express though somewhat obscure testimony to the fact. Two other names are found applied in the classical writers to the pseudo-Smerdis. He is called Tanyoxares by Xenophon (Gyrop., viii, 7) and by Ctesias (Pers., 8-13), and Oropastes by Justin (i. 9). The latter, as Ewald (Gesch. Israels, iv. p. 118) suggests, may well be supposed to be a corruption derived from Ortosastes, which is an exact reproduction of the Hebrew form of the name Artaxerxes (cf. the rendering Αp0ασασ0α in the LXX., Ezra iv. 7, &c.) In regard to this identification two additional and final remarks are to be made. On the one hand, it is unreasonable to allege, as Keil and others do, by way of objection, that the reign of the pseudo-Smerdis was too short (only seven months) to allow of representations being made to his court, and an answer returned in reference to affairs at Jerusalem. It is to be taken into account that the enemies of the Jews had begun their machinations in the time of his predecessor, and their agents were doubtless present in the Persian capital when the new king ascended the throne, ready to avail themselves of the new opportunity. On the other hand, all that is known of the policy of the usurper is in excellent harmony with the part ascribed to him by the sacred writer. Belonging to the Magian tribe, and ruling, probably, in the interest of Median as opposed to Persian supremacy, he naturally set himself to subvert the policy of Cyrus; and we have express and indisputable testimony, in the elaborate inscription at Behistun engraved by the authority of his successor Darius, that his procedure, especially in regard to religious interests, was of the nature of a revolution, which the son of Hystaspes glories in having arrested and reversed (of. Rawlinson’s Anc. Monarchies, iv. p. 397).

In the Sassanian dynasty there are three royal personages bearing the name now in question :—(1.) The founder of the dynasty is called Artaxerxes, or Ardeshir, surnamed Babegan, from the name of his father Babek. He was probably tributary king of Persia under the Parthian rule, and he revolted against Artabanus, king of Parthia, about 220 a.d. Artabanus was defeated and slain in a great battle in the plain of Hormuz, and Artaxerxes succeeded in establishing the ascendency of Persia, and his own position as independent sovereign in 226 a.d. (see Malcolm, op. cit. i. p. 89; Rawlinson, Sixth Oriental Monarchy, p. 365, ∕.) (2.) Another

Artaxerxes, belonging to the dynasty of the Sassanides, reigned for four years, 381-385 a.d. ; and (3.) immediately before the Mahometan conquest, an infant prince was raised to the throne by the same name, and nominally occupied it for five months, 629 A.D. For further details regarding these monarchs see Persia. (w. tu.)

ARTAXERXES LONGIMANUS is supposed by Dr. Prideaux to be the Ahasuerus of Esther. He was the son of Xerxes, and grandson of Darius Hystaspes, and reigned in Persia from the year of the world 3531 to 3579. He permitted Ezra, with all those inclined to follow him, to return into Judea, in the year of the world 3537, Ezra vii, viii. Afterward, Nehemiah also obtained leave to return, and to build the walls and gates of Jerusalem, in the year of the world 3550, Nehem. i, 11. From this year, chronologers reckon the beginning of Daniel’s seventy weeks, Daniel xi, 29. These are weeks of years, and make four hundred and ninety years. Dr. Prideaux, who discourses very copiously, and with great learning, on this prophecy, maintains that the decree mentioned in it for the restoring and rebuilding of Jerusalem, cannot be understood of that granted to Nehemiah, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes; but of that granted to Ezra, by the same Artaxerxes, in the seventh year of his reign. From that time to the death of Christ, are exactly four hundred and ninety years, to a month: for in the month Nisan the decree was granted to Ezra; and in the middle of the same month Nisan, Christ suffered, just four hundred and ninety years afterward. The easterns think that the surname of Longimanus was given to Artaxerxes by reason of the extent of his dominions; as it is commonly said that princes have long hands: but the Greeks maintain that this prince had really longer hands or arms than usual; and that, when he stood upright, he could touch his knees. He is said to have been the handsomest man of his time. The eastern people call him Bahaman, and give him the surname of Ardschir-diraz-dest, or the long-handed. He was the son of Asfendiar, sixth king of the second dynasty of the Persians. After having extinguished the family of Rostam, which was formidable to him on account of the great men who composed it, he carried his arms into the western provinces, Mesopotamia and Syria, which formed part of his empire. He took Babylon from Belshazzar, son of Nebuchadnezzar; and he put in his place Kiresch, who by us is called Cyrus. Some Persian historians assert that the mother of Artaxerxes was a Jewess, of the tribe of Benjamin, and family of Saul; and that the most beloved of his wives was of the tribe of Judah, and race of Solomon, by Rehoboam, king of Judah. If this be true, we need not wonder that he should recommend to Cyrus to favour the Jewish nation. This Cyrus performed, by sending back the people into their own country, and permitting them to rebuild their temple. But the truth of this story is doubtful; and were it true, the interference of the special providence of God must still be acknowledged. Artaxerxes reigned forty-seven years, and died in the year of the world 3579, and before Jesus Christ 425.