We perhaps infer from the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah that they suffered during the campaigns of the two Artaxerxes against Egypt. We know that some were banished to the Caspian Sea because they were implicated in a wide-spread insurrection against the fast declining Persia, instigated by the different peoples settled around the Mediterranean shore. We are told further that an upstart named Bagoas heavily taxed the Jews and made a quarrel over the priesthood an excuse to desecrate their Temple. That is really all. When this intriguer attempted to place his own candidate on the Persian throne the knell had been rung. Persia's days were numbered. Like its Babylonian predecessor, it had been "weighed in the balance and found wanting." The Greek forces of Alexander were advancing and about the year 332 the Persian dynasty, founded by Cyrus--let us say "The Great"--passed away. Religious Activity. But silent though the period was in external doings, it was a stirring time in Israel for what we might call the experience of the soul. When we turn to the religious life of the Jews, the epoch, apparently so barren, is full of significance. Great achievements are here disclosed behind the historian's silence. To tell the religious story, we must go back to Ezra again--the Ezra who came to Judea with the second group of Babylonian exiles and who revived the religious life of the community (_People of the Book_, vol. iii, ch. xxxiv), was the father of the _Scribes_. A scribe was not merely, as the name might imply, one who copied the writings of others, but one who expounded them. The Pentateuch, which contains many codes of law in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, came to be called "the Law" as a whole. (Torah.) We shall learn how this term later came to include the vaster code that was gradually deduced from these Biblical books. In fact, from now on, _Judaism is interpreted as law_. How did it happen that the Jewish religion was accepted by its observers as a Law? In ancient times Religion and State were one. There was not that division between sacred affairs and secular that we are familiar with to-day. Duty to God and the King were allied; patriotism merged into piety. Hence the Pentateuch contains laws touching civil as well as spiritual relations, and regulates affairs both secular and sacred. For example, it contains laws about kings, servants, agriculture, war, food, dress, courts of justice, loans, inheritance, in fact every need that arose in the civilization of the time. It contains the Decalogue, regulations for festivals and sacrificial worship, duties to the poor, the stranger, the dumb animal, the code of Holiness (Levit. xvii-xxvii), and exhortations to noble living. It is beautiful to notice how the moral pervades the secular and gives to all a sanctifying touch.