Devil under this fearful servitude, in which he also holdeth the Floridans and Virginians at this day.

For the wickedness of this king Ahaz, God stirred up Rezin of Damascus, and Pekah the son of Remalia, king of Israel, against him, who invaded Judæa, and besieged Jerusalem, but entered it not.

The king of Syria, Rezin, possessed himself of Elah by the Red sea, and cast the Jews out of it; and Pekah slaughtered in one day 5 an hundred and twenty thousand Judæans, of the ablest of the kingdom; at which time Maaseiah the son of Achaz was also slain by Zichri, with Azrikam the governor of his house, and Elcanah the second person unto the king. Besides all this, two hundred thousand prisoners of women and children the Israelites led away to Samaria; but by the counsel of the prophet Oded they were returned and delivered back again.

As Irsael and Aram vexed Juda on the north, so the Edomites and the Philistines, who evermore attended the ruin of Judæa, entered upon them from the south, and took Bethsemes, Ajalon, Gaderoth, Socho, Timnah, and Gemzo, h slew many people, and carried away many prisoners. Whereupon, when Achaz saw himself environed on all sides, and that his idols and dead gods gave him no comfort, he sent to the Assyrian Tiglathpileser, to desire some aid from him against the Israelites and Aramites, presenting him with the silver and gold both of the i temple and king's house.

Tiglathpileser wanted not a good example to follow, in making profit of the troubles that rose in Palæstina. His father having lately made himself, from a provincial lieutenant, king of Babylon and Assyria, had a little before led him the way into Judæa, invited by Menahem king of Israel. Wherefore now the son willingly hearkened to Achaz, and embraced the advantage. As for Belochus himself, he was content to assign some other time for going through with this enterprise; because (as I have said before) he was not firmly settled at home, and the Syrian kings lay directly 2 King xvi.

2 Chron. xxviii. 6.

h

2 Chron. xxviii.

i

in his way, who were yet strong both in men and fame. But Tiglath, having now with the treasures of Jerusalem prepared his army, first invaded the territory of Damascus, won the city, and killed Rezin, the last of the race of the Adads, who began with David, and ended with this Achaz. At Damascus Achaz met Tiglath, and taking thence a pattern of the altar, sent it to Uriah the priest, commanding the like to be made at Jerusalem, whereon at his return he burnt sacrifice to the gods of the Syrians. In the mean while Tiglath possessed all Basan, and the rest beyond Jordan, which belonged to the tribe of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. And then passing the river, he mastered the cities of Galilee, invaded Ephraim, and the kingdom of Israel, and made them his vassals. And notwithstanding that he was. invited and waged by Achaz, yet after the spoil of Israel he possessed himself of the greater part of Juda, and as it seemeth enforced Achaz to pay him tribute. For in the second of Kings, the eighteenth, it is written of Ezechiah, that he revolted from Ashur, or rebelled against him, and therefore was invaded by Sennacherib. After Ahaz had beheld and borne these miseries, in the end of the sixteenth year of his reign he died, but was not buried in the sepulchres of the kings of Juda.

With Ahaz lived Medidus, the third prince in Media, who governed forty years, saith k Eusebius: Diodorus and Ctesias find Anticarmus, instead of this Medidus, to have been Sosarmus's successor, to whom they give fifty years.

Tiglath Phileser held the kingdom of Assyria all the reign of Ahaz; yet so, that Salmanassar his son may seem to have reigned with him some part of the time: for we find that Ahaz did send unto the kings of Ashur to help him. The Geneva note says, that these kings of Ashur were Tiglath Pileser, and those kings that were under his dominion. But that he or his father had hitherto made such conquests, as might give him the lordship over other kings, I do neither find any history nor circumstance that proveth. Wherefore I think that these kings of Ashur

k Euseb. in Chron.

1

2 Chron. xxviii. 16.

were Tiglath, and Salmanassar his son, who reigned with his father, as hath been said before: though how long he reigned with his father, it be hard to define.

At this time began the ephori in Lacedæmon, a hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus, according to m Plutarch. Eusebius makes their beginning far later, namely, in the fifteenth Olympiad. Of these ephori, Elalus was the first, Theopompus and Polydorus being then joint kings. These ephori, chosen every year, were comptrollers as well of their senators as of their kings, nothing being done without their advice and consent. For (saith Cicero) they were opposed against their kings, as the Roman tribunes against the consuls. In the time of Ahaz died Æschylus, who had ruled in Athens ever since the fiftieth year of Uzziah. Alcamenon, the thirteenth of the Medontidæ, or governors of the Athenians, (so called of Medon, who followed Codrus,) succeeded his father Eschylus, and was the last of these governors: he ruled only two years. For the Athenians changed first from kings (after Codrus) to governors for life; which ending in this Alcamenon, they erected a magistrate whom they termed an archon, who was a kind of burgomaster, or governor of their city, for ten years.

This alteration Pausanias, in his fourth book, begins in the first year of the eighth Olympiad. Eusebius and Halicarnassæus, in the first of the seventh Olympiad; at which time indeed Carops the first of these began his ten years rule.

The kingdom of the Latins, governed about three hundred year by the Sylvii, of the race of Æneas, took end in the same Ahaz's time; the foundation of Rome being laid by Romulus and Remus in the eighth year of the same king. Codoman builds it the eleventh of Ahaz, Bucholzer in the eighth, (as I think he should,) others somewhat later, and in the reign of Ezechias. Cicero, Eutropius, Orosius, and others, square the time of the foundation to the third year of the sixth Olympiad. But Halicarnassæus, Solinus Antiochenus, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Eusebius, to the

m Plut. in Vita Sol.

first year

of the seventh; who seem not only to me, but to many very learned chronologers, to have kept herein the best account.

CHAP. XXIV.

Of the antiquities of Italy, and foundation of Rome in the time of Ahaz.

SECT. I.

Of the old inhabitants, and of the name of Italy.

AND here to speak of the more ancient times of Italy,

and what nations possessed it before the arrival of Æneas, the place may seem to invite us; the rather because much fabulous matter hath been mixed with the truth of those elder plantations. Italy, before the fall of Troy, was known to the Greeks by divers names; as first Hesperia, then Ausonia, the one name arising of the seat, the other of the Ausones, a people inhabiting part of it: one ancient name of it was also Enotria, which it had of the Enotri; whom n Halicarnassæus thinks to have been the first that brought a colony of Arcadians into that land. Afterwards it was called Italy, of Italus: concerning which changes of names Virgil speaks thus :

Est locus Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt :
Terra antiqua, potens armis, atque ubere glebæ :
Œnotrii coluere viri, nunc fama minores
Italiam dixisse, ducis de nomine, gentem.
There is a land which Greeks Hesperia name,
Ancient and strong, of much fertility.
Enotrians held it, but we hear by fame,
That by late ages of posterity,

'Tis from a captain's name call'd Italy.

Who this captain or king may have been, it is very uncertain: for Virgil speaks no more of him, and the opinions of others are many and repugnant. But like enough it is, that the name which hath continued so long upon the whole

n Halicar. 1. 1.

country, and worn out all other denominations, was not at the first accepted without good cause. Therefore to find out the original of this name, and the first planters of this noble country, Reineccius hath made a very painful search, and not improbable conjecture. And first of all he grounds upon that of Halicarnassæus, who speaks of a colony which the Eleans did lead into Italy, before the name of Italy was given to it; secondly, upon that of P Justin, who saith, that Brundusium was a colony of the Ætolians; thirdly, upon that of a Strabo, who affirms the same of Temesa, or Tempsa, a city of the Brutii in Italy; lastly, upon the authority of Pliny, who shews that the Italians did inhabit only one region of the land, whence afterwards the name was derived over all. Concerning that which is said of the Eleans and Etolians, who (as he shews) had one original; from them he brings the name of Italy. For the word Italia differs in nothing from Aitolia, save that the first letter is cast away, which in the Greek words is common, and the letter o is changed into a; which change is found in the name of Ethalia, an island near Italy, peopled by the Etholians: and the like changes are very familiar in the Æolic dialect; of which dialect (being almost proper to the Ætolians) the accent and pronunciation, together with many words little altered, were retained by the Latins, as Dionysius Halicarnassæus, Quintilian, and Priscian the grammarian teach. Hereunto appertains that of Julian the apostate, who called the Greeks cousins of the Latins. Also the common original of the Greeks and Latins from Javan; and the fable of Janus, whose image had two faces, looking east and west, as Greece and Italy lay, and was stamped on coins, with a ship on the other side; all which is, by interpretation, referred to Javan, father of the Greeks and Latins; who sailing over the Ionian sea, that lies between Ætolia and the western parts of Greece and Italy, planted colonies in both. Now whereas Reineccius thinks that the names of Atlas and Italus belonged both to one man, and thereto applies that of Berosus, who called Cethim Italus; Halicar. 1. 1. P Justin. 1. 12. a Strabo, 1. 6. r Plin. 1. 3. c. 5.