2. I am disposed to believe that the subsequent merit of Daniel might justify the Monarch’s caprice. I will allow, (on the credit of the story of Susanna and the elders) that there never was a Judge of hands more clean, or of a more discerning eye; and that, in his ministerial capacity, he was ever attentive to the public interest, and careless of his own. I cannot deny, that Daniel, as a favourite, as a stranger, and as an honest man, must have the whole court of Babylon for his enemies; and am very sensible, that in the administration of a great empire, the purest virtue and the most shining abilities may afford room for misrepresentation and calumny. How often must the great Sully have yielded to those arts of courts, had he not possessed a sure resource in the sound understanding and generous heart of his friend and master! The situation of the Jewish and of the Huguenot Minister were somewhat similar. Both were issued from an oppressed race of obstinate sectaries; and it might be deemed a very artful contrivance to invent some test, which must force them to relinquish their place, or their principles; to forfeit the favour of their prince, or the confidence of their party. Thus far the comparison is tolerably exact. But the French ministers were well assured that the fate and innocence of Sully would be left to the common order of providence. The courtiers of Darius must apprehend, that the piety of Daniel would be asserted by a miraculous interposition. The people of Babylon, not many years before, had beheld the wonderful deliverance of Daniel’s friends from the fiery furnace; and it would have been a strange project for these crafty statesmen, a second time to provoke the jealous God of Israel, to exalt the glory of their enemy, and to draw down destruction on their own heads.
This age indeed, to whom the gift of miracles has been refused, is apt to wonder at the indifference with which they were received by the ancient world. Instead of the instant terror, lasting conviction, and implicit obedience, we might rationally expect; the Jews as well as the Gentiles conducted themselves, as if they neither remembered nor believed the miracles to which they were witnesses. Although the hand of the Almighty was almost perpetually employed in tracing out those divine characters; they were no sooner formed, than they were obliterated from the minds of men. It may possibly be alledged, that faith was distracted by the multiplicity of false as well as of genuine miracles; whilst even the patrimony of the Lord was encompassed by rival deities.
——Who from the pit of hell,
Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix
Their seats long after next the seat of God;
Their altars by his altar; Gods ador’d
Among the nations round; and durst abide
Jehovah thund’ring out of Sion, thron’d
Betwixt the Cherubim——
But this solution is more proper, I am afraid, to aggravate than to alleviate the pressure of the difficulty. Counterfeit money may pass current with the true; since both are coined by human hands and human industry: But I have always considered Salmoneus imitating Jove’s thunder by rattling with a brazen chariot over a brazen bridge, as the most contemptible legend in the whole compass of the Grecian mythology.
3. The law of the Medes and Persians is represented as a constitutional sanction, which put it out of Darius’s power to revoke his rash edict. Such legal restraints are the natural offspring of free governments; but ill suit with the genius of Asiatic despotism. From the inaccessible solitude of a seven-fold palace the king of the Medes disposed without controul of the lives and property of his subjects: nor does there exist a more dreadful act of authority, than the retaliation inflicted by Darius on Daniel’s enemies; who, to the number of a hundred and twenty, were cast, with their wives and children, into the den of lions. If the Persians enjoyed any degree of freedom among their mountains, they became at the same time slaves and conquerors; and a formal determination of their judges stands recorded by Herodotus. “That it was lawful for the king to do whatever he pleased. There are indeed some instances, where a wise despot will check himself, and a foolish one will find himself checked by the nature of things. Such institutions as are derived from Divine authority, ancient custom, or general opinion, cannot be shaken without endangering the foundations of his own throne. But it would be truly unaccountable, that his cooler reason should not be permitted to correct the passion or surprize of a moment; and that the occasional declarations of his pleasure should not be annihilated by the same authority, which produced them. May I not assert, that the Greek writers who have so copiously treated of the affairs of Persia, have not left us the smallest vestige of a restraint, equally injurious to the monarch, and prejudicial to the people?”
4. The edict of Darius, “that during thirty days, whosoever should ask any petition of either god or man, save only of the king, should be cast into the den of lions,” implied an almost total suspension of religious worship; which consists much more in prayer than in thanksgiving. Such an extraordinary interdict, by depriving the people of the comforts, and the priests of the profits of religion, must have diffused a general discontent throughout his empire; which might easily have been inflamed into sedition and civil war. With what colours could the ministers of Darius gloss over a measure big with every mischief, and destitute of the smallest advantage? In what language could they address themselves to the reason, or even to the passions of their Sovereign; who is described to be of an advanced age, and a lover of justice and moderation? But is there any character, which, with the utmost latitude of supposition, may account for this edict? An irreligious prince may be indiscreet enough to treat with ridicule whatever is held sacred by his subjects; but he will entertain too great a contempt both for the people, and for popular superstition, ever to think of forcibly separating them from each other. The bigot is actuated by a warmer principle than the infidel; but his attachment to his own mode of worship rises in proportion to his hatred of all others. Had Darius, as a disciple of Zoroaster, shut up the temples of the idolaters, he would have directed the fires of the Magi to have blazed with redoubled ardour. Even those tyrants who, destitute of human virtues, have aspired to divine honours, have grafted their pretensions on the established religions. To be seated between Castor and Pollux, to obtain the embraces of the Moon, to confer with Jupiter of the Capitol, and to place his image in the temple of Jerusalem, would have gratified the wildest ambition of Caligula. But to suspend during thirty days the most universal propensity of mankind, is a strain of wanton despotism unparalleled in the history of the world; for the interdicts of the Popes were of a quite different nature. They were not the arbitrary prohibitions of a temporal monarch; but a chastisement, inflicted by the vicegerent of Christ, who excluded the offenders from the benefits of Christianity, till they had satisfied the Deity, offended in the person of his ministers.
5. There yet remains a stronger, or at least a more palpable objection, against the veracity of the author of the book of Daniel: “The high probability that Darius the Mede never existed; or, what amounts to the same, that no prince of that name or nation reigned at Babylon, between the time of Nebuchadnezzar and that of Cyrus.” It would be to little purpose to expatiate on the uncertainty of ancient history, and the careless vanity of the Greek writers. The outlines of the history of Babylon are known to us with uncommon precision. The Canon of Ptolemy contains the stories of its kings, deduced from authentic records, attested by astronomical observations, and confirmed by the fragments of Berosus, which are still extant in Josephus. Berosus describes the conquests and buildings of Nebuchadnezzar, and only omits to mention the metamorphosis of that monarch into an ox. His three immediate successors, were of his own family; the fourth, Nabonadius, was a Babylonian raised to the throne by the conspirators who murdered his predecessor; and cast down from it by the victorious arms of Cyrus king of Persia. In this close series of the Babylonian and Persian dynasties, there cannot be found the smallest interval, which will admit a Median prince.
Of the various expedients devised to elude this difficulty, there is one only which can deserve our notice; both as the most tolerable in itself, and as having been embraced by the chronologists of the most distinguished merit and reputation; by Usher, Prideaux, Sir Isaac Newton, &c. In their extreme distress, the Cyaxares of Xenophon offered himself to their imagination, as the properest person to support the character of Darius the Mede. For this purpose, they have supposed that he reigned two years over the Babylonian empire; after it had been subdued by the arms of Cyrus, his nephew and his lieutenant. Such is their hypothesis, which falls to the ground if the Cyropædia is a romance; and is overthrown by it, should that noble performance be received as a genuine history.
1. Without insisting on the opinion of Plato and Tully, I would rather appeal to your own feelings; as I cannot doubt your familiar acquaintance with the writings of the Attic Bee. Compare the Anabasis with the Cyropædia; and feel the difference between truth and fiction; between the lively and copious variety of the one, and the elegant poverty of the other. A few general incidents, thinly scattered through a diffuse work, and destitute of any notes of geography or chronology, compose the life of Cyrus; which seems lost in a multitude of speeches, councils, reflections, and familiar episodes. Xenophon was a philosopher and a soldier; and if we unravel with any care the fine texture of the Cyropædia, we shall discover in every thread the Spartan discipline and the philosophy of Socrates. The only part which has the air of real history, is the judicious digression, where Xenophon compares the degeneracy of the modern Persians with the wise institutions of their founder. He possessed the best opportunities of examining both the one and the other, whilst he served in the camp of the younger Cyrus, and traversed, with the immortal ten thousand, the greatest part of the provinces of Artaxerxes. The first Cyrus was confessedly a great man. The conquest of Asia is a sufficient testimony of his abilities; and the name of Father given him by the Persians after his death, must stand as the surest evidence of his virtues. But the hero of the Cyropædia is drawn as a perfect character; a monster as fabulous, and less interesting than those of Ariosto. His wise councils are never, in a single instance, seduced by passion, misled by error, or disappointed by accident. Xenophon labours to establish the empire of prudence; his countryman Herodotus had entertained himself with displaying the tyranny of fortune; and both writers, whilst they inculcate the moral precept, seem alike, though by opposite paths, to deviate from historic truth.
2. But if the Cyropædia be admitted as a genuine history, Darius the Mede is still excluded from the throne of Babylon, since Cyaxares himself never ascended it. When the Cyrus of Xenophon besieged that great city, he had gradually shaken off all dependance on his uncle, and assumed to himself the supreme command, and exclusive advantages of the war. The strength of his army consisted of seventy thousand natural Persians, solely attached to their hereditary prince, from every motive of duty, gratitude, and interest. He was followed by a various train of nations, allies and subjects, all subdued by his arms and policy. About forty thousand Medes, who served under his banners, had long since been taught to despise the weakness, and to disobey the commands of their sovereign. After the conquest, Cyrus was solemnly inaugurated king of Babylon, with every circumstance of pomp and greatness, which could dazzle the eyes of the multitude. Some time afterwards he visited his uncle at Ecbatana, presented him with rich gifts, the spoils of Asia, accepted his only daughter in marriage, and very politely told the King of the Medes, that he had set apart for him, one of the finest palaces of Babylon; that whenever he should chuse to come to that city, he might find himself, as if he were still in his own dominions.