If the arguments here adduced are satisfactory, the Ahasuerus of our passage is the immediate successor of Cyrus—the frantic tyrant Cambyses, who came to the throne B.C. 529, and died after a reign of seven years and five months ; and the dis crepancy between Ezra and the apocryphal Esdms and Josephus—both of whom leave out ver. 6, and mention only the king of whom the detailed story of the letter is related, whom the one calls Artaxerxes, and the other Cambyses—may be re conciled, by supposing that they each make the reigns of Cambyses and of the impostor Smerdis into one.
The third Ahasuerus (Sept. ApraW,Srs) is the Persian king of the book of Esther. The chief facts recorded of him there, and the dates of their occurrence, which are important in the subsequent inquiry, are these : In the third year of his reign he made a sumptuous banquet for all his nobility, and prolonged the feast for 18o days. Being on one occasion merry with wine, he ordered his queen Vashti to be brought out, to shew the people her beauty. On her refusal to violate the decorum of her sex, he not only indignantly divorced her, but published an edict concerning her disobedience, in order to insure to every husband in his dominions the rule in his own house. In the seventh year of his reign he married Esther, a Jewess, who how ever concealed her parentage. In the twelfth year of his reign, his minister Haman, who had received some slights from Mordecai the Jew, offered him ro,000 talents of silver for the privilege of ordering a massacre of the Jews in all parts of the empire on an appointed day. The king refused this immense sum, but acceded to his request ; atnd couriers were despatched to the most distant pro vinces to enjoin the execution of this decree. Be fore it was accomplished, however, Mordecai and Esther obtained such an influence over him, that he so far annulled his recent enactment as to despatch other couriers to empower the Jews to defend themselves manfully against their enemies on that day ; the result of which was, that they slew Soo of his native subjects in Shushan, and 75,000 of them in the provinces.
Although almost every Medo-Persian king, from Cyaxares I. down to Artaxerxes III. (Ochus), has in his turn found some champion to assert his title to be the Ahasuerus of Esther, yet the present inquiry may reasonably be confined within much narrower limits than would be requisite for a dis cussion of all the rival claims which have been pre ferred. A succinct statement, principally derived from Justi's' ingenious Versuch fiber den Konig Ahasuerus (in Eichhorn's Repertorium, xv. 1-38), will suffice to shew that Darius Hystaspis is the earliest Persian king in whom the plainest marks of identity are not evidently wanting ; that Darius Hystaspis himself is, nevertheless, excluded on less obvious, but still adequate grounds ; and that the whole question lies, and with what preponderance of probability, between Xerxes and his successor Artaxerxes Longimanus.
As Ahasuerus reigned from India to Ethiopia (Esth. i. t), and imposed a tribute (not necessarily for the first time) on the land and isles of the sea (x. I) ; and laid the disobedience of Vashti before the seven princes which see the king's face, and sit first in the kingdom (i. 14) ; it is argued that these three circumstances concur, according to the testimony of profane history, to exclude all the predecessors of Darius Hystaspis. For Darius was the first Persian king who subdued India, which thenceforth formed the twentieth province of his empire ; and, as for Ethiopia, Cambyses, who first invaded it, only obtained a partial con quest there (Herod. iv. 44 ; iii. 25, 94). Darius was also the first who imposed a stated tribute on the different provinces of the empire, as, from the times of Cyrus, the revenue depended on the volun tary gifts of the people (Herod. iii. 89). Lastly, the seven princes, and their privilege of seeing the king's face, are traced to the events attending the elevation of Darius to the throne : when the seven conspirators who slew the usurper Smerdis stipu lated, before ever it was deeded which of their number should obtain the crown, that all the seven should enjoy special privileges, and, among others, this very one of seeing the king at any time with out announcement (Herod. iii. 84). This is con firmed by the fact, that although the Persian coun sellors of the time anterior to Darius are often mentioned (as when Cambyses laid before them a question parallel to that about Vashti, Herod. iii. 31), yet the definite number seven does not occur ; whereas, after Darius, we find the seven counsellors both in Esther and again in the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (Ezra vii. 14). (It is an oversight to appeal to this account of the seven conspirators in order to find the precise number of seven princes. For the narrative in Herodotus shews that, as Darius was chosen king from among the seven, there could only be six persons to claim the privilege of seeing the king's face; not to insist that Otanes, who made a separate demand for himself, and who withdrew from the party before those stipulations were made, may possibly have reduced the number of privileged counsellors to five.) But neither can it be Darius Hystaspis himself, although he possesses all these marks of agreement with the person intended in the book of Esther. For, first, not only can none of the names of the seven conspirators, as given either by Herodotus or by Ctesias, be brought to accord with the names of the seven princes in Esther; but, what is of greater importance, it is even more difficult to find the name of Darius himself in Achashverosh.
For, notwithstanding the diverse corruptions to which proper names are exposed when transmitted through different foreign languages, there is yet such an agreement between the Zend name found by Grotefend in the cuneiform inscriptions, and the Darius of the Greeks, and Daojefvesh (the name by which Darius Hystaspis is undoubtedly designated elsewhere in the Old Testament), that the genuine ness of this title is open to less suspicion than that of almost any other Persian king. It would, there fore, be inexplicable that the author of the book of Esther above all others should not only not call him by the authentic name of sacred as well as profane history, but should apply to him a name which has been shewn to be given, in almost all contemporary books of the Old Testament, to other Persian kings. Secondly, the moral evidence is against him. The mild and just character ascribed to Darius renders it highly improbable that, after favouring the Jews from the second to the sixth year of his reign, he should become a senseless tool in the hands of Haman, and consent to their extirpation. Lastly, we read of his marry ing two daughters and a granddaughter of Cyrus, and a daughter of Otanes—and these only; would Darius have repudiated one of these for such a trifle, when his peculiar position, as the first king of his race, must have rendered such alliances in dispensable ? It only remains now to weigh the evidence against Artaxerxes, in order to lead more cogently to the only alternative left—that it is Xerxes. As Artaxerxes allowed Ezra to go to Jerusalem with a colony of exiles in the seventh year of his reign (Ezra vii. 1-7); and as he issued a decree in terms so exceedingly favourable to the religious as well as civil interests of the Jews (giving them liberal grants and immunities, speaking of their law as the law of the God of heaven, and threatening punishment to whoever would not do tne law of God and of the king, Ezra vii. 1-26) : how could Haman, five years afterwards, venture to describe the Jews to him as a people whom, on the very account of their law, it was not for the king's profit to suffer? And how could Haman so directly propose their extermination, in the face of a decree so signally in their favour, and so recently issued by the same king? especially as the laws of the Medes and Persians might not be altered ! Again, as Artaxerxes (assuming always that he is the Artachshast of Ezra vii. 1, and not Xerxes, as is nevertheless maintained by J. D. Michaelis, Jahn, and De Wette) was capable of such liberality to the Jews in the seventh year of his reign, let its not forget that, if he is the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther, it was in that same year that he married the Jewess. Now, if—by taking the first and tenth months in the seventh year of the king (the dates of the de parture of Ezra, and of the marriage of Esther) to be the first and tenth months of the Hebrew year (as is the usual mode of notation; see Hitzig, Die xii laeinen Propheten, note to Haggai i. 1), and not the first and tenth from the period of his acces sion—we assume that the departure of Ezra took place after his marriage with her, his clemency might be the effect of her influence on his mind. Then we have to explain how he could be induced to consent to the extirpation of the Jews in the twelfth year of his reign, notwithstanding that her influence still continued—for we find it evidently at work in the twelfth year. But if. on the other hand, his indulgence to Ezra was before his mar riage, then we have even a greater difficulty to encounter. For then Artaxerxes must have acted from his own unbiassed lenity, and his purposed cruelty in the twelfth year would place him in an incongruous opposition with himself. As we, moreover, find Artaxerxes again propitious to their interests, in the twentieth year of his reign— when he allowed Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem—it is much easier to believe that he was also favourably disposed to them in the twelfth. At any rate, it would be allowing Esther a long time to exercise an influence on his disposition, if his clemency in the twentieth year was due to her, and not to his own inclination. Besides, the fact that neither Ezra nor Nehemiah gives the least hint that the liberal policy of Artaxerxes towards them was owing to the influence of their countrywoman, is an important negative point in the scale of proba bilities. In this case also there is a serious diffi culty in the name. As Artaxerxes is called Artach shast in Ezra and Nehemiah, we certainly might expect the author of the book of Esther to agree with them in the name of the king whom they all had had such occasion to know. Nor is it, per. haps, unimportant to add, that Norberg asserts, on the authority of native Persian historians, that the mother of Bahman, i, e., Artaxerxes Longi manus, was a 7ewess (Optscula Acad. iii. 2iEl. This statement would agree excellently with the theory that Xerxes was Ahasuerus. Lastly, the joint testimony borne to his clemency and magna nimity by the acts recorded of him in Ezra and Nehemiah, and by the accordant voice of profane writers (Plutarch, Artaxerxes; Diodor. Sic. xi. 7 ; Ammian. Marcel. xxx. S), prevents us from recog nising Artaxerxes in the debauched, imbecile, and cruel tyrant of the book of Esther.