13.

[4] Josephus here follows Herodotus, and those that related how Cyrus
made war with the Scythians and Massagets, near the Caspian Sea, and
perished in it; while Xenophon's account, which appears never to have
been seen by Josephus, that Cyrus died in peace in his own country of
Persia, is attested to by the writers of the affairs of Alexander the
Great, when they agree that he found Cyrus's sepulcher at Pasargadae,
near Persepolis. This account of Xenophon is also confirmed by the
circumstances of Cambyses, upon his succession to Cyrus, who, instead of
a war to avenge his father's death upon the Scythians and Massagets, and
to prevent those nations from overrunning his northern provinces, which
would have been the natural consequence of his father's ill success
and death there, went immediately to an Egyptian war, long ago begun by
Cyrus, according to Xenophon, p. 644, and conquered that kingdom; nor is
there, that I ever heard of, the least mention in the reign of Cambyses
of any war against the Scythians and Massagets that he was ever engaged
in all his life.

[5] The reader is to note, that although the speeches or papers of
these three of the king's guard are much the same, in our Third Book
of Esdras, ch. 3. and 4., as they are here in Josephus, yet that the
introduction of them is entirely different, while in our Esdras the
whole is related as the contrivance of the three of the king's guards
themselves; and even the mighty rewards are spoken of as proposed by
themselves, and the speeches are related to have been delivered by
themselves to the king in writing, while all is contrary in Josephus. I
need not say whose account is the most probable, the matters speak for
themselves; and there can be no doubt but Josephus's history is here to
be very much preferred before the other. Nor indeed does it seem to me
at all unlikely that the whole was a contrivance of king Darius's own,
in order to be decently and inoffensively put in mind by Zorobabel of
fulfilling his old vow for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple,
and the restoration of the worship of the "one true God" there. Nor
does the full meaning of Zorobabel, when he cries out, 3 Esd. 4. 41],
"Blessed be the God of truth;" and here, "God is true and righteous;" or
even of all the people, 3 Esd. 4. 41, "Great is truth, and mighty above
all things;" seem to me much different from this, "There is but one true
God, the God of Israel." To which doctrine, s