From this city, that the people may with joy

Send thee choice hecatombs in the spring,

Delighted with the harp and chearful feasting,

And chorus's of Pœans and acclamations about thy altar.

For truly I am afraid, beholding the folly

And sedition of the Greeks, which corrupts the people: but thou Apollo,

Being propitious, keep this our city.

The Poet tells us further that discord had destroyed Magnesia, Colophon, and Smyrna, cities of Ionia and Phrygia, and would destroy the Greeks; which is as much as to say that the Medes had then conquered those cities.

The Medes therefore Reigned 'till the taking of Sardes: and further, according to Xenophon and the Scriptures, they Reigned 'till the taking of Babylon: for Xenophon [[422]] tells us, that after the taking of Babylon, Cyrus went to the King of the Medes at Ecbatane and succeeded him in the Kingdom: and Jerom, [[423]] that Babylon was taken by Darius King of the Medes and his kinsman Cyrus: and the Scriptures tell us, that Babylon was destroyed by a nation out of the north, Jerem. l. 3, 9, 41. by the Kingdoms of Ararat Minni, or Armenia, and Ashchenez, or Phrygia minor, Jer. li. 27. by the Medes, Isa. xiii. 17, 19. by the Kings of the Medes and the captains and rulers thereof, and all the land of his dominion, Jer. li. 11, 28. The Kingdom of Babylon was numbred and finished and broken and given to the Medes and Persians, Dan. v. 26. 28. first to the Medes under Darius, and then to the Persians under Cyrus: for Darius Reigned over Babylon like a conqueror, not observing the laws of the Babylonians, but introducing the immutable laws of the conquering nations, the Medes and Persians, Dan. vi. 8, 12, 15; and the Medes in his Reign are set before the Persians, Dan. ib. & v. 28, & viii. 20. as the Persians were afterwards in the Reign of Cyrus and his successors set before the Medes, Esther i. 3, 14, 18, 19. Dan. x. 1, 20. and xi. 2. which shews that in the Reign of Darius the Medes were uppermost.

You may know also by the great number of provinces in the Kingdom of Darius, that he was King of the Medes and Persians: for upon the conquest of Babylon, he set over the whole Kingdom an hundred and twenty Princes, Dan. vi. 1. and afterwards when Cambyses and Darius Hystaspis had added some new territories, the whole contained but 127 provinces.