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Magnesia for his bread, Myonta for his meat and other victuals, and Lampsacus for his wine. This enabled him to live in great splendour (Diodorus, xi. 12. Plutarch, in Themist.). Thus also provision was made for the wants and luxuries of the queens,-one city or province being given them for clothes, another for their hair, another for their necklaces, and so on for the rest of their expenses. Herodotus mentions that the revenues of the city of Anthylla in Egypt were assigned by the Persians to the queen for the cost of her sandals (Euterpe, 98). And mention is made of a Greek ambassador to Persia who spent a whole day in travelling through a district called (in consequence of such assignment) the Queen's Girdle; and another in traversing a territory styled the Queen's Head-dress. Socrates, in Plat. Alcibiad.) To speak therefore of giving "unto the half of the kingdom," has a sort of exaggerated propriety which could not, without such explanation, be well understood. The above statement may also suggest some ideas concerning the cost and splendour of Queen Esther's "royal apparel."

12. "The queen did let no man come in with the king unto the banquet...but myself."-It appears from this book, as well as from Greek authors, that although there is a great resemblance in general usage, the queens of Persia were allowed far greater liberty and respect than they now enjoy. No queen now would think of inviting a man to her banquet; nor perhaps would this have been allowable in the present instance had not the king also been present. To couple Haman with the king in the invitation was a most flattering distinction, of which both appear to have been fully sensible. As there is so much said of eating and drinking in this book, we will, once for all, introduce an interesting description from Athenæus (iv. 145. after Heraclides of Cuma) of the royal usages in this matter. From this account, which is well corroborated, it appears that of the king's guests the greater number ate without, so as to be seen by all; while the remainder and more distinguished, dined with the monarch in the interior. Yet even these last did not properly eat with the king. There were in the interior palace two apartments opposite each other, in one of which sat the king and in the other his guests. The prince saw them through a screen which rendered him invisible to them. On feast days, they sometimes dined all together in a large hall. When the king gave a banquet (which often happened) he did not admit more than twelve persons. The prince then ate apart, after which an eunuch called the guests to come and drink with the king, which they did, but not with the same wine. (This explains what is meant by a "banquet of wine.") They sat upon the ground (carpeted doubtless), and the prince reclined upon a couch with golden feet (answering to the "beds of gold and silver" of chap. i. 6, and the "bed" of chap. vii. 8). But the king usually ate alone, or sometimes his wife or some of his sons were admitted to his table; and it was the custom for the young women of the harem to sing before him at his meals. The repast of the king was very magnificent. There was killed daily for the service of the palace, not less than a thousand victims-such as horses, camels, oxen, asses, and particularly sheep; besides various kinds of fowl. The greater part of these meats, as well as the bread, were destined for the support of the guards and various satellites of the court: being carried into the peristyle of the palace, and there distributed in rations. At the entertainments each guest had his portion set before him, and carried away that which he did not eat.-This account in many of its circumstances agrees with the present usages of Persia; and we believe there are few passages of Scripture alluding to Persian entertainments which will not be explained by a reference to it.

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CHAPTER VI.

1 Ahasuerus, reading in the chronicles of the good

service done by Mordecai, taketh care for his reward. 4 Haman, coming to sue that Mordecai might be hanged, unawares giveth counsel that he might do him honour. 12 Complaining of his misfortune, his friends tell him of his final destiny.

On that night 'could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king.

2 And it was found written, that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king's chamberlains, the keepers of the 'door, who sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus.

3 And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this? Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, There is nothing done for him.

4 And the king said, Who is in the court? Now Haman was come into the outward court of the king's house, to speak unto the king to hang Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him.

5 And the king's servants said unto him, Behold, Haman standeth in the court. And the king said, Let him come in.

6 So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man 'whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself?

7 And Haman answered the king, For the man 'whom the king delighteth to honour,

1 Heb. the king's sleep fled away. Or, Bigthan, chap. 2. 21. Heb. in whose honour the king delighteth. 8 Heb. cause him to ride.

8 'Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head :

9 And let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour.

10 Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king's gate: 'let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken.

11 Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour. 12

And Mordecai came again to the king's gate. But Haman hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered.

13 And Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends every thing that had befallen him. Then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto him, If Mordecai be of the secd of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him.

14 And while they were yet talking with him, came the king's chamberlains, and hasted to bring Haman unto the banquet that Esther had prepared.

3 Heb. threshold. 4 Heb. in whose honour the king delighteth.

Heb. let them bring the royal apparel. 7 Heb. wherewith the king clothed himself,
Heb. suffer not a whit to fall.

Verse 1. "The book of the records of the chronicles.”—-In the three books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, there are many passages which intimate the care taken by the Persian government to register every occurrence. The testimony of the Greek writers is to the same effect, and accompanied by details which sufficiently instruct us in the whole system. We have before seen something similar in the courts of the Hebrew kings, and the practice has prevailed in other Oriental nations; but we know of no nation which took so much pains as the Persians to preserve the memory of its exploits by written documents. They have all perished, with the exception of the few extracts preserved in these books and in the older Greek historians. The Persians do not appear, at this early period, to have had any historical poets, such as they had at a much later time, and still less any real historians. Heeren seems to have well discriminated the character of their history as being essentially connected with their policy, and a necessary fruit of the despotism which reigned among them, and of the profound veneration with which the kings were regarded. All that the king did or said was deemed worthy of registration. He was usually surrounded by scribes whose duty it was to take note of his words and actions: they were rarely absent from him, and always attended when he appeared in public. They were present at his festivals, at his reviews of the army, and attended him in the tumult of battle, and registered whatever words fell from him on these occasions. They were equally charged with the registration of edicts and ordinances, which, according to the usage of the East, were written in the king's presence, sealed with his ring, and then dispatched by couriers. Such were the sources of the royal journals or chronicles of Persia, which were deposited in the different capitals of the empire where the king resided-at Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana, and formed the archives of this people. But, properly speaking, they must have formed rather the history of the court than of the empire, and certainly appear to have embraced many anecdotes of even the private life and sayings of the king. From the incident in the text, it appears that the kings sometimes had these journals read to them.

Many corroborative and illustrative anecdotes might be adduced, not only from the ancient accounts of Persia, but from the usages of other Oriental nations. Two or three of the shortest will suffice for our present purpose. Herodotus, in describing the review made by Xerxes of his vast army, states that he was attended by secretaries, who wrote down the answers which he received to the various questions which he put as he rode along the ranks in his chariot (vii. 100), The same historian represents this monarch as seated on Mount Ægaleos, to view the battle of Salamis; and wheneve. he saw any one of his own people displaying peculiar valour in the fight, he inquired about him, and the secretaries in attendance made a note of the answer, which usually specified the name and city of the person whose deed had attracted the royal notice (viii. 90). There is no very distinct notice of the attendance of secretaries at the royal feasts: they seem rather to have been called when any thing occurred for them to record-at least at the private meals of the king; but it appears that they attended at public feasts. The travellers of the middle age, in their ample descriptions of the state of the Mongol emperor, tell us that when he dined four secretaries were seated under his table to write down his words-which he might never revoke. (Ranking's Historical Researches,' p. 75.) As the king's word was also an unalterable law among the Medes and Persians, we may infer a similar usage. These facts serve to illustrate the mode in which materials were collected. Perhaps the final preparation was not unlike that in Abyssinia, as described by Bruce: "The king has near his person an officer who is meant to be his historiographer: he is also keeper of his seal, and is obliged to make a journal of the king's actions, good and bad, without comment of his own upon them. This, when the king dies, or at least soon after, is delivered to the council, who read it over, and erase every thing false in it, whilst they supply every material fact which may have been omitted, whether purposely or not." Bruce's editor (Dr. A. Murray) observes that the "complete chronicle of a reign, written by the king's historiographer, contains all the remarkable transactions at court during every day in the month throughout the whole year." (Bruce, vol. iii. p. 409.) 8. "The royal apparel... which the king useth to wear."-In the notes to Gen. xli. 42, and 1 Sam. xviii. 4, the reader will find adequate illustrations of the honour conferred by the present of a dress from the king. We take this opportunity of introducing a cut which exhibits the ceremony of receiving such a dress, as described in the former of the notes to which we refer. The person who is to be invested has proceeded to the appointed place to meet the bearer of the dress of honour, where a tent has been pitched for the occasion. Standing opposite to the favoured person, the king's commissioner commences the ceremony by pressing to his forehead the royal order, which he is about to read previously to the presentation of the dress. The dresses presented by the ancient kings of Persia were such Median robes as they wore themselves, and which none might wear but those on whom they conferred them. The privilege of wearing such a dress, therefore, formed a permanent distinction of a very high order. It was death for any one to wear the king's own robe; and it is therefore an instance of the ambition of Haman that, supposing these honours were intended for himself, he should have made such a proposal. It was an honour which, from its extraordinary character, was, beyond all things, calculated to express the most pre-eminent favour and distinction, and render it at once visible to all the people.

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"The horse that the king rideth upon."-In 1 Kings i. 33, we read that David directed that Solomon should be set upon his own mule, and conducted down to Gihon, there to be anointed and proclaimed king. This shows the distinction implied in riding the animal the king was accustomed to use. Indeed, the Hebrew writers say, that it was

most unlawful for any one to ride on the king's horse, to sit on his throne, or use his sceptre. The present direction is obviously on the same idea, which is a very common one in the East. It is a part of that system which is employed to render the royal person venerable, that whatever has once been appropriated to the king's use, becomes his exclu sively, so that no one dares to share its use with him, or to succeed him in it when his own occasion for it has ceased. Hence it was, if it be not still, the custom for no one to ride the horse of the Turkish sultan either during or after its short period of service. When that expired, the happy animal was never again mounted, and was kept for the remainder of its life without any kind of labour. Our wood-cut certainly represents the horse of a Persian king; but at a period considerably later than that to which the present history refers. It is copied from part of a Persian sculp ture on the face of a rock near Shapor. It represents a horse, held in attendance till the king comes forth to mount it, from the council or levee which he is represented as holding in a higher compartment of the same sculpture, which we have not introduced. The figure is curious and interesting, though we have no assurance that its furniture resembled that of the king's horse in the time of Mordecai.

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"The crown royal which is set upon his head."-Some think that the horse's head is intended, the "horse" being the immediate antecedent. Without disputing that horses when paraded in state were, in a certain sort crowned, we rather suppose that the turban, cap, or crown which the king wore, or such as he wore, is intended. It was a capital crime to wear the same turban or crown that the king had worn, as well as any other part of his dress. Alexander adopted the Persian usages in this and other respects, and Arrian tells a story how, when the king was sailing on the Euphrates, his turban fell off among some reeds. One of the watermen immediately jumped out and swam to fetch it; but finding that he could not carry it back in his hand without wetting it, he put it upon his head and brought it safely to the buat. Alexander gave him a talent of silver for his zeal, and then ordered his head to be struck off, for irreverently setting the royal diadem thereon.-That in all these particulars the mad ambition of Haman aspired to one of the actual dresses of the king-sacred and peculiar as this was--appears evident from the fact that there could have been nothing else of this sort for Haman to aspire to, since from his high station he must already have enjoyed the Median dress-which was that which the king himself wore, and which constituted the dress of honour that he gave to his favourites. Haman was however prudent enough to stop here, and did not ask for the sceptre and the bow, which were the more peculiar distinctions of Persian royalty. These distinctions are thus enumerated by Statius (Theb. lib. viii.)

-When some youth of royal blood succeeds
To his paternal crown, and rules the Medes-
His slender grasp, he fears, will ill contain
The weighty sceptre, and his bow sustain,
And trembling takes the courser's reins in hand,

And huge tiara, badge of high command."-LEWIS.

On comparing the description in ancient writers with the intimations in the present book, and with the sculptures at Persepolis, concerning the state crown of the Persian kings, it seems difficult to make them coincide as separate statements; but if we join them together as one statement, we imagine that the result furnishes a crown such as continues to be worn by the kings of Persia. We give two specimens: one from a portrait of Nadir Shah, and the other from Sir R. K. Porter's portrait of the late Futteh Ali Shah. Its basis seems to be fashioned on the model of the Median cap which the king wears in the Persepolitan sculptures; while at its top we recognise the rayed crown; and, at the bottom, the richly jewelled border answers to the primitive diadem, or regal circlet. Without therefore contending that the high turban and added wreath, or cydaris of Xenophon, the "huge tiara" of Statius, and the "great crown of gold" of ch. viii. 15, answer in every respect to the representations which our cuts afford; we do think that the state crowns of modern Persia furnish the best attainable idea of those worn by Cyrus and his successors. They are cer tainly not at all like the crowns of Europe: nor must the reader suppose that the "crowns" anywhere mentioned in the Bible bore resemblance to them. We do not recognise any such crowns in ancient coins and sculptures; and Selden states that they did not come into use till about the age of Constantine. The Oriental crown is usually a cap more or less enriched with gems and gold, and sometimes bound about at the base with a rich shawl. We add the description which Mr. Morier gives of the magnificent crown of Futteh Ali Shah, as represented in our cut. king was one blaze of jewels, which literally dazzled the sight on first looking at him....A lofty tiara, of three elevations was on his head, which shape appears to have been long peculiar to the crown of the great king. It was entirely composed of thickly-set diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, so exquisitely disposed as to form a mixture of the

"The

most beautiful colours, in the brilliant light reflected from its surface. Several black feathers, like the heron-plume, were intermixed with the splendid aigrettes of this truly imperial diadem, whose bending points were finished with pear-formed pearls of immense size." The king's usual head-dress is a plain black cap, which bears probably about the same relation to this crown, as the plain cap of the Persepolitan sculptures bore to the ancient state crowns.

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CHAPTER VII.

1 Esther, entertaining the king and Haman, maketh suit for her own life and her people's. 5 She accuseth Haman. 7 The king in his anger, understanding of the gallows which Haman had made for Mordecai, causeth him to be hanged

thereon.

So the king and Haman came 'to banquet with Esther the queen.

2 And the king said again unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom.

3 Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request:

4 For we are sold, I and my people, 'to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king's damage.

5 Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he,

and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?

6 And Esther said, 'The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid 'before the king and the queen.

7 And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.

8 Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also 'before me in the house? As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face.

9 And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the 'gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon.

10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.

1 Heb. to drink. Heb. that they should destroy and kill, and cause to perish. 3 Heb. whose heart hath filled him.
4 Heb, the man adversary. 5 Or, at the presence of.
Heb, with me. 7 Heb. tree.

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