red or ceased to have votaries, but that, from a
dominant system, supported by all the resources of the state, and
enforced by the civil power over a wide extent of territory, it became
simply one of many tolerated beliefs, exposed to frequent rebuffs and
insults, and at all times overshadowed by a new and rival system--the
comparatively pure creed of Zoroastrianism, The conquest of Babylon by
Persia was, practically, if not a death-blow, at least a severe wound,
to that sensuous idol-worship which had for more than twenty centuries
been the almost universal religion in the countries between the
Mediterranean and the Zagros mountain range. The religion never
recovered itself--was never reinstated. It survived, a longer or a
shorter time, in places. To a slight extent it corrupted Zoroastrianism;
but, on the whole, from the date of the fall of Babylon it declined.
"Bel bowed down; Nebo stooped;" "Merodach was broken in pieces."
Judgment was done upon the Babylonian graven images; and the system, of
which they formed a necessary part, having once fallen from its proud
pre-eminence, gradually decayed and vanished.

Parallel with the decline of the old Semitic idolatry was the advance
of its direct antithesis, pure spiritual Monotheism. The same blow which
laid the Babylonian religion in the dust struck off the fetters from
Judaism. Purified and refined by the precious discipline of adversity,
the Jewish system, which Cyrus, feeling towards it a natural sympathy,
protected, upheld, and replaced in its proper locality, advanced from
this time in influence and importance, leavening little by little the
foul mass of superstition and impurity which came in contact with it.
Proselytism grew more common. The Jews spread themselves wider. The
return from, the captivity, which Cyrus authorized almost immediately
after the capture of Babylon, is the starting point from which we may
trace a gradual enlightenment of the heathen world by the dissemination
of Jewish beliefs and practices--such dissemination being greatly helped
by the high estimation in which the Jewish system was held by the civil
authority, both while the empire of the Persians lasted, and when power
passed to the Macedonians.

On the fall of Babylon its dependencies seem to have submitted to
the conqueror, with a single exception. Phoenicia, which had never
acquiesced contentedly either in Assyrian or in Babylonian rule, saw,
apparently, in the fresh convulsion that