sing their ancient allies, and extending their own territories by
unjust and violent methods.

On both sides, and sometimes in the same person, we shall find a
surprising mixture of good and bad, of virtues and vices, of glorious
actions and mean sentiments; and sometimes, perhaps, we shall be ready to
ask ourselves, whether these can be the same persons and the same people,
of whom such different things are related: and whether it be possible,
that such a bright and shining light, and such thick clouds of smoke and
darkness, can proceed from the same source?

The Persian history includes the space of one hundred and seventeen years,
during the reigns of six kings of Persia: Darius, the first of the name,
the son of Hystaspes; Xerxes the first; Artaxerxes, surnamed Longimanus;
Xerxes the second; Sogdianus (these two last reigned but a very little
time); and Darius the second, commonly called Darius Nothus. This history
begins at the year of the world 3483, and extends to the year 3600. As
this whole period naturally divides itself into two parts, I shall also
divide it into two distinct books.

The first part, which consists of ninety years, extends from the beginning
of the reign of Darius the first, to the forty-second year of Artaxerxes,
the same year in which the Peloponnesian war began; that is, from the year
of the world 3483, to the year 3573. This part chiefly contains the
different enterprises and expeditions of the Persians against Greece,
which never produced more great men and great events, nor ever displayed
more conspicuous or more solid virtues. Here will be seen the famous
battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataeae, Mycale,
Eurymedon, &c. Here the most eminent commanders of Greece signalized their
courage; Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pausanias,
Pericles, Thucydides, &c.

To enable the reader the more easily to recollect what passed within this
space of time among the Jews, and also among the Romans, the history of
both which nations is entirely foreign to that of the Persians and Greeks,
I shall here set down in few words the principal epochas relating to them.

Epochas of the Jewish History.

The people of God were at this time returned from their Babylonish
captivity to Jerusalem, under the conduct of Zorobabel. Usher is of
opinion, that the history of Esther ought to be placed in the reign of
Darius. The Israelites, under the shadow of this pr