b. Darius the Mede was another name for Cyrus.

Jeremiah prophesied that it would be lost and that it would not be either remembered or remade (Jeremiah 3:16).

The first order of business was the rebuilding of the altar so that the regular sacrifices could be reinstituted. The actual reconstruction of the Temple began the following year.

After the conquest of Babylon, only Egypt remained as an enemy to the Persian Empire. Plans were made for an invasion of Egypt and entrusted to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. Although he was nearly 70 years old, Cyrus himself set out to deal with a revolt of nomads in the east.

It was a campaign from which he never returned. He was wounded in battle and died. He body was returned to a tomb in Pasargade. The following inscription was placed over his tomb.

With the death of Cyrus, his eldest son, Cambyses, came to the throne. He would reign from 530 to 522 B.C. During his reign, the work on the Temple would be halted.

In order to stabilize his position as king, Cambyses secretly murdered his younger brother, Smerdis. The death of Smerdis was kept a secret to the general population. This deed would soon come back to haunt him.

In 526 B.C. Cambyses invaded and conquered Egypt. Once he had control of Egypt, he adopted the royal costume of the pharaohs and laid official claim to be the son of Re, sun god. Then he decided to push south into Africa in order to other domains to conquer.

Cambyses sent a land expedition of 50,000 men westward toward Carthage. This expedition was apparently lost in the desert, since it was never heard from again. Meanwhile Cambyses led another expedition up the Nile River into Ethiopia. He got cut off from his supply lines and a great part of his army starved to death.

Back in Egypt, Cambyses received news that a man posing as his dead brother Smerdis had arisen to the throne and had won the favor of the people by remitting taxes for three years. Cambyses headed back for Persia, but he never arrived. His sudden death is still a mystery. Herodotus states that he died from a wound which was accidentally self-inflicted while mounting his horse. The Persian record suggests suicide. It is even possible that he was assassinated.

The pretender was able to hold the throne for several months, calling himself Smerdis, the brother of Cambyses. A band of seven nobles who had been with Cambyses in Egypt managed to talk their way past the royal guards and then fight their way through a handful of protective eunuchs to assassinate the pseudo-Smerdis. One of the nobles, a prince by the name of Darius, now took the throne.

When Darius came to the throne, he found the Empire in an uproar. Although the Medes and the Persians were ready to accept him as king, other provinces were not.

Babylon rebelled and braced itself for a long siege. This city was considered impregnable and Darius seemed to have been thwarted.

Darius had a general named Zopyrus who deliberately cut off his own nose and ears, shaved his head like a criminal's, and had welts raised upon his body with a whip. He then showed up before the gates of Babylon, claiming that Darius had turned against him and asking for refuge.

The Babylonians were suspicious of him and they decided to test his loyalty before trusting him completely. They sent him out against a force of Persians at the head of a small force. Zopyrus won the battle, just as he and Darius had planned.

Zopyrus was now the sudden hero of Babylon and he was made Commander of the Wall. his first official act was to open the gates of Babylon and let Darius and his army into the city.

Darius burned the defenses of the city, pulled down the gates, and impaled 3000 of the leading citizens. This reprisal had a strong quenching effect of the other rebellious nations, causing them to have second thoughts. Thus, peace was restored to the Empire.

With peace restored to the Empire, Darius began to reorganize the government. He completed the division of the Empire into satrapies or provinces and fixed the annual tribute of each province.

He standardized currency, weights and measures. He developed highways and a postal system to draw the huge Empire together. Indeed, the United States Postal Service Motto is taken from the words of Herodotus as he describes the Persian postal system.

Darius completed the construction of a canal 50 miles long linking the Red Sea to the Nile River. This project was begun by Pharaoh Necho II nearly a hundred years earlier.

The prophets Haggai and Zechariah both prophesied during the second year of the reign of Darius (Ezra 5:1; Haggai 1:1; Zechariah 1:1). At their urging, Zerubbabel resumed the work of rebuilding the Temple. When challenged by the Persian officials, he made claim to the permission that had originally been granted by Cyrus (Ezra 5:13).

When this was reported to Darius, he called for a search to be made of the royal records at Babylon and Ecbatana. When Cyrus' edict was brought to light, Darius ordered it to be followed and allowed the Temple project to be funded by the royal treasury of Persia (Ezra 6:2-12). As a result, the temple was completed in the 6th year of Darius (516 B.C.).

Both Cyrus and Cambyses had ruled the Empire from the saddles of their warhorses. With the peace that came in the days of Darius, there was a need for a centralized capital.

(a) Susa.

(b) Persepolis.

In 512 B.C. Darius decided to attack the Scythians who had been raiding along the east coast of the Black Sea. His plan was to attack them from the rear by marching around the west end of the Black Sea and coming up behind them.

That same year, Darius led his army across the Bosphorus over a bridge of boats tied side by side. From there, he marched north to the Danube.

Darius advanced into the north country, but the Scythians would not meet him in open battle. Instead, they harassed his army and with their guerrilla warfare tactics until Darius was forced to flee with considerable losses.

This defeat of Darius at the hands of the Scythians did not go unnoticed by the Greeks. In 494 B.C. the Ionian Greeks on the entire west coast of Anatolia revolted against the Persian rule. Darius sent an army against these Ionian cities and effectively defeated them. By 493 B.C. the rebellion had been crushed. Since the revolt of the Ionian Greeks had been actively encouraged by the European Greeks, Darius decided to take action against them.

In 485 B.C. Egypt rebelled. Xerxes put down the revolt, leaving the land in shambles. A Persian ruler was placed upon the throne to see that it did not happen again.

Babylon rebelled next, killing Zopyrus, their governor who had once betrayed them to the Persians. Since Babylon no longer had the fortifications of the past, she was no match for Xerxes and his array.

Xerxes ordered his army to smash all of the fortifications and the temples of the city. Priests were slaughtered and land was confiscated. The city was all but wiped out.

With civil problems now taken care of, Xerxes now determined to take up the invasion of Greece which Darius had begun. It was to be a miserable disaster.

a. Crossing the Hellespont.

b. Thermopylae.

c. Athens.

d. Salamis.

During the final 15 years of the reign of Xerxes, he sought the cure to his discouragement in lavish building projects and magnificent feasts and banquets.

It was during this time that Xerxes married Esther and elevated her to the position of queen. When a plot to exterminate the Jews came to light, she was in a position to influence Xerxes to intervene and save her people.

Xerxes was murdered in his own bedchambers in 465 B.C. by a group of conspirators. Artabanus, one of the assassins and the commander of the Royal Bodyguard, took the throne and held it for seven months. He was then killed and succeeded by Artaxerxes, the legitimate heir to the throne.

Although a small remnant of Jews had returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel over 50 years earlier, the work of rebuilding the city had not progressed very far.

In 457 B.C. Artaxerxes permitted the Jewish scribe Ezra to lead an expedition of about 5000 Jews back to Jerusalem to settle there and to continue the work of rebuilding the city.

This work was met with violent opposition by the Samaritans who lived in the area to the north of Judah. These people had intermarried with Gentiles and so were not considered to be Jewish.

In 444 B.C. Artaxerxes commissioned his Jewish cupbearer, Nehemiah, to be the new governor of Jerusalem and gave him permission to finish the walls of the city.

Under Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem were repaired and the Temple services restored. This began a new period of national prosperity for the Kingdom of Judah that would last for the next 150 years.

The reign of Darius II was filled with murder and court intrigue. Although there were no battles fought with the Greeks during this period, Persian diplomats were successful in inciting conflict between Athens and Sparta, thus strengthening Persia s hold over the Greek cities of Anatolia.

However, this did not change the course of Persia's history and revolts continued to spread throughout the Empire, involving Sardis, Media, Cyprus and Egypt.

Darius II had two sons when he died: Artaxerxes II and Cyrus III. Artaxerxes was the oldest and so he was given the throne.

At the coronation ceremony of Artaxerxes II at Persepolis, Cyrus tried to assassinate his brother. The attempt failed and Cyrus was caught.

Their mother, Queen Parysatis, interceded for Cyrus and the new king allowed his brother to go free, giving him the satrapy of Anatolia. It was to be a mistake.

Back in Anatolia, Cyrus raised an army made up largely of Spartan mercenaries. With this forced, he marched east against his brother, meeting him at Cunaxa on the Euphrates River on September 3, 401 B. C.

The army of Cyrus was greatly outnumbered, but even so, the Persian chariot corps and infantry of Artaxerxes were rio match for the Spartan phalanx.

In the heat of the battle, Cyrus spotted his brother and personally rushed in, striking him in the chest through his breastplate and wounding him. Just as he was about to finish him off, Cyrus was killed by a thrown javelin which hit him in the face.

There were 10,000 Spartan mercenaries still intact at the end of the battle. With Cyrus dead, they found themselves 700 miles behind enemy territory. Their generals had been killed and they chose Xenephon to lead them in their retreat. They managed to fight their way all the way back to the Black Sea, fighting off one Persian attack after another. Their success in this venture was taken by the Greeks as a sign of Persian weakness. Others also saw this and took it as an opportunity to revolt.

Egypt had declared her independence at the accession of Artaxerxes II and had never been reconquered. Now Egypt allied herself with other rebellious satrapies and prepared to march against Artaxerxes.

This imminent threat was postponed when an internal revolt broke out within Egypt, forcing Pharaoh Takhos to abandon his plans and surrender to Persia. However, rebellious disturbances continued to plague the Empire for the remainder of the reign of Artaxerxes II.

Artaxerxes III (his real name was Ochos) came to the throne following the death of his father. His first official act was to murder all of his relatives, regardless of age or gender. The number ran up to several dozen. He set out to put down all of the rebellions that had been fermenting within the Empire.

Now many patriotic Greeks urged their fellow countrymen to unite against the Persian Empire. However there was still too much jealousy between the cities for any unification to take place. Only to the north was there any sense of unity. Philip of Macedon had succeeded in conquering all of the neighboring kingdoms and he proposed to invade Persia.

Thus, when Athens concluded a treaty with Persia, Philip attacked Athens and won a decisive victory. He now formed the League of Corinth, a coalition of all of the Greek states except for Sparta. This League had as its goal the liberation of the Ionian cities from Persia.

That same year, Artaxerxes III was poisoned by a court eunuch who had his own political ambitions. This euniuch's name was Bagoas.

Arses was the youngest son of Artaxerxes III. Bagoas placed him on the throne after the murder of his father, expecting to use him as a puppet ruler. Evidently, Arses had too much of a mind of his own and so, after a short reign of only two years, Bagoas also had him poisoned.

Darius III was a cousin of Artaxerxes III who had managed to escape the genocide of his predecessor. He had distinguished himself in battle and then had become the satrap of Armenia. Bagoas chose him to be the new king of the Persian Empire.

Too late, Bagoas learned that the new king could think for himself and was riot about to be used as a mere puppet in the hands of a eunuch. When Darius discovered a plot against his life, he forced Bagoas to swallow the poison that had been prepared for him.

Darius III became king of Persia in 336 B.C. That same year Philip of Macedon died, leaving his kingdom in the hands of his 20-year old son, Alexander the Great.