(7) _The Persian Period_ lasted from 538 to 331 B. C. During this time Babylonia was but a province of the Persian empire, though the Persian kings made it one of their capitals. Cyrus reversed the policy of transportation, which had been practised by the Assyrians and Babylonians for two hundred years, and permitted subject peoples to return to their lands and restore their institutions and worship. He sought to attach them to his government by gratitude instead of fear. It was owing to this policy that the Jewish state was once more established with Jerusalem as its capital, though still a Persian colony. Cambyses extended Persian power to Egypt in 525, and Darius I, 521-485 B. C., extended it to India and into Europe. Under Darius the temple at Jerusalem was rebuilt and the Jews there tried unsuccessfully to regain their independence. This they attempted once more under Artaxerxes III about 350 B. C., but his general, Bagoses, put down their rebellion with great severity. During the Persian period life in Babylonia went on as before. The old gods were worshiped, the old culture was continued, the same language was used, and many business documents written in it have come down to us. The earlier Persian kings employed it for their inscriptions, and in a short time the Persians made from it an alphabet of their own. (8) _The Greek and Parthian Periods._--Alexander the Great overthrew Darius III, the last of the Persian kings, in 331 B. C., when Assyria and Babylonia passed under the sway of the Macedonian. When Alexander returned from his conquest of hither India in 325 B. C., he planned to extend his empire westward to the Atlantic Ocean, and to make Babylon its capital. Plans for the enlargement and beautifying of the city, so as to make it a worthy capital for such an empire, were under way when Alexander suddenly died in June, 323 B. C. In the final division of the world among Alexander’s successors, Babylonia fell to Seleucus, together with all the territory from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. As Seleucus desired a capital on the Mediterranean, so as to watch more successfully the movements of his rivals, he built Antioch on the Orontes and made it his residence. Babylon was, however, made the capital of the eastern half of the empire, and the king’s son, as viceroy, made it his residence.