rable magnificence,
entertaining the chief leaders of the nation, and reforming all disorders.
Jerusalem gradually regained political importance, while the country of
the ten tribes, though filled with people, continued to be the seat of
idolaters.

(M228) On the death of Nehemiah, B.C. 415, the history of the Jews becomes
obscure, and we catch only scattered glimpses of the state of the country,
till the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C. 175, when the Syrian
monarch had erected a new kingdom on the ruins of the Persian empire. For
more than two centuries, when the Greeks and Romans flourished, Jewish
history is a blank, with here and there some scattered notices and
traditions which Josephus has recorded. The Jews, living in vassalage to
the successors of Alexander during this interval, had become animated by a
martial spirit, and the Maccabaic wars elevated them into sufficient
importance to become allies of Rome--the new conquering power, destined to
subdue the world. During this period the Jewish character assumed the
hard, stubborn, exclusive cast which it has ever since maintained--an
intense hostility to polytheism and all Gentile influences. The Jewish
Scriptures took their present shape, and the Apocryphal books came to
light. The sects of the Jews arose, like Pharisees and Sadducees, and
religious and political parties exhibited an unwonted fierceness and
intolerance. While the Greeks and Romans were absorbed in wars, the Jews
perfected their peculiar economy, and grew again into political
importance. The country, by means of irrigation and cultivation, became
populous and fertile, and poetry and the arts regained their sway. The
people took but little interest in the political convulsions of
neighboring nations, and devoted themselves quietly to the development of
their own resources. The captivity had cured them of war, of idolatry, and
warlike expeditions.

(M229) During this two hundred years of obscurity, but real growth,
unnoticed and unknown by other nations, a new capital had arisen in Egypt;
Alexandria became a great mart of commerce, and the seat of revived
Grecian learning. The sway of the Ptolemaic kings, Grecian in origin, was
favorable to letters, and to arts. The Jews settled in their magnificent
city, translated their Scriptures into Greek, and cultivated the Greek
philosophy.

(M230) Meanwhile the internal government of the Jews fell into the hands
of the high priests--the Persian gove