he was defirous to place them. Accordingly, when five of his brethren were brought before the King, and asked what their profeffion was, they answered him as Jofeph had bid them; adding, that the famine which raged in Canaan, had forced them to come with all their cattle into Egypt; and begging that he would be pleafed to appoint them the land of Gofhen to dwell in; which Pharaoh readily granted. Jofeph likewife prefented his father to him, who wished the King abundance of happinefs; and being asked how old he was, anfwered, an hundred and thirty. Here the King expreffing, perhaps, fome wonder to fee a man fo old, and in fo good a cafe, Jacob ad'ded, that his life had been fo full of troubles, that he came vastly short of the years of his ancestors. After this, Jofeph conducted him, and the whole family, to the land of Goshen; where he took care to fupply them with all the neceffaries of life during the whole time of the famine. Pharaoh likewife ordered Jofeph to chufe fome of the ableft of them, and to commit the care of his cattle to them; which he accordingly did.

The fiege of BABYLON by CYRUS.

F the reduction of this proud metropolis

Foth the duft, in the reign of Nabonadius,

Labynitus, or Belshazzar, as we shall prove anon, authors give the following account.

CYRUS, having fubdued the feveral nations inhabiting the great continent, from the Egean fea to the Euphrates, and likewife Syria and Arabia,

Arabia, entered Affyria, and bent his march towards Babylon. Nabonadius hearing that he was advancing to his metropolis, marched out to give him battle; but being, without much ado, put to flight, he retreated to Babylon; where he was immediately blocked up, and clofely befieged by Cyrus. The fiege of this important place was no eafy enterprife. The walls were of a prodigious height, the number of men to defend them very great, and the city stored with all forts of provifions for twenty years. However, thefe difficulties did not difcourage Cyrus from profecuting his defign; but, defpairing of being able to take the place by ftorm, he caufed a line of circumvallation to be drawn quite round the city, with a large and deep ditch; reckoning, that, if all communication with the country were cut off, the more people there were within the city, the fooner they would be obliged to furrender. That his troops might not be overfatigued, he divided his army into twelve bodies, appointing each body its month for guarding the trenches. The befieged, thinking themfelves out of all danger, by reafon of their high walls and magazines, infulted Cyrus from the ramparts, and looked upon all the trouble he gave himself as fo much unprofitable labour.

CYRUS, having spent two entire years before Babylon, without gaining any confiderable advantage over the place, at laft refolved upon the following ftratagem, which put him in poffeflion of it. He was informed, that a great annual folemnity was to be kept in Babylon; and that the Babylonians, on that occafion, Ε

were

were accuftomed to spend the whole night in drinking and debauchery. This he thought a proper time to furprise them; and accordingly fent a ftrong detachment to the head of the canal, leading to the great lake, which had been lately dug by Nitocris, with orders, at an appointed time, to break down the great bank which was between the lake and the canal, and to turn the whole current into the lake. At the fame time, he appointed one body of troops at the place where the river entered into the city, and another where it came out, ordering them to march in by the bed of the river, which was two ftades in breadth, as foon as they should find it fordable. Towards the evening, he opened the head of the trenches on both fides the river, above the city, that the water might discharge itself into them. By this means, and the breaking down of the great dam, the river was foon drained. Then the two above mentioned bodies of troops, according to their orders, entered the channel, the one commanded by Gobryas, and the other by Gadates; and, finding the gates all left open, by reafon of the general diforder of that riotous night, they penetrated into the very heart of the city without oppofition; and, meeting at the palace, according to their agreement, furprifed the guards, and cut them in pieces. Thefe who were in the palace, opening the gates to know the caufe of this confufion, the Perfians rushed in, took the palace, and killed the King, who, fword in hand, came out to meet them. The King being killed, and those who were about him put to flight, the reft fubmitted, and the Medes

and

and Perfians became mafters of the place. The taking of Babylon put an end to the Babylonian empire, and fulfilled the prophefies which the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Da niel, had uttered against that proud metropo. lis. In that very night, the King entertained, on occafion of the publick rejoicings, a thorfand of his lords, at a great banquet; and, having profaned the facred veffels, which his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar had brought from Jerufalem, he firft faw written on the wall of his banqueting room, and afterwards heard from the mouth of Daniel, the fevere doom which immediately overtook him..

The Hiftory of the Siege of TROY.

THE

HE best and most rational account we have of this great war, is that which we gather from Homer; whofe inimitable performance ought not to be regarded as a mere fiction, or the refult of a poetical imagination, but as a rich fund of the most antient hiftory of Greece. The known rules of epic poetry fuppofe the truth of the hiftory, though they admit of its being embellished with poetical fictions: fo that if we had no other monuments of antiquity to convince us of the Trojan war, and the taking of that city by the Greeks, yet we could not question the truth of the fact. But most of the hiftorical events related by Homer, are attefted and confirmed by the most creditable hiftorians, and by all the monuments of antiquity, namely, by the Arundelian marbles. We must therefore care-fully

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fully diftinguish, in Homer's works, what is historical, from what is merely fictitious. He defcribes the state of Greece at that time; and informs us, that it was divided into a great many dynasties; that Agamemnon King of Mycena, Sicyon and Corinth, was the moft powerful prince of all Greece; that he was appointed to command in chief: he enumerates and names the feveral nations and princes that fided with the Trojans; he gives us an infight into the art of war practifed in that age; difclofes the laws and religion of the Greeks; gives us the character of their leaders; defcribes the fituation of their country and cities, &c.; all which are purely historical. So that Homer's poems may defervedly be confidered, as the most antient hiftory of the Greeks; whofe earlier ages are buried in oblivion, for want of fuch a writer to transmit their actions to pofterity.

THE number of fhips employed by the Greeks in this expedition, according to Euripides, Lycophron, and Virgil, amounted to 1000; Homer enumerates 1186; but Thucydides raifes the number to 1200. The Bootian fhips, that were the largest, carried 120 men each; thofe of the Philoctete were the fmalleft, and each manned with 50. Every man, (the commanders excepted), was both a mariner and a foldier; fo that, fuppofing the fleet to have been of 1200 fail, as Thucydides affirms, and the hips to have carried, one with another,.85 men, we fhall find the Greek army to have been 102,000 men frong; no great force, confidering that all the powers of Greece, except the Acarnanes alone, were engaged