No ease at all, I venture to think, is made out. Mr. Frazer's Assyrian etymologies are met by competing etymologies. Moreover, we know next to nothing of the Babylonian Zakmuk, but we do know that the Persian Sacæa, Sakea, or _Sakia_ was, like Purim, a period of hard drinking and wild licence: which does not resemble a solemn religious festival of the supreme god, Marduk, or a period of wailing for Tammuz. There is another coincidence, unnoted, I think, by Mr. Frazer, but already noted by us. Herodotus, our oldest Greek source for the Persians, tells us that their chief feast was called _Magophonia_, and celebrated the _massacre_ of the hostile Magi.[20] Strabo tells us that the Sacæa were supposed to commemorate a _massacre_ of intoxicated Sacæ. Purim is held to celebrate a _massacre_ of the foes of the Jews. Can these three feasts for a massacre coincide by accident? It is not easy to see how this tradition attached itself to the slaying of a criminal, either as king's proxy or as representative of Tammuz. IV. IS PURIM PRE-EXILIAN OR POST-EXILIAN? In any case Purim has not been successfully connected with Zakmuk. Mr. Frazer, however, says that 'an examination of that' (the Jewish) 'tradition, and of the manner of celebrating the feast, renders it probable that Purim is nothing but a more or less disguised form of the Babylonian feast of the Sacæa or Zakmuk.'[21] We have seen that stern dates do not allow us to identify Sacæa with Zakmuk. The month Lous is firm as the Macedonian phalanx, and will not masquerade as March-April, when Zakmuk was held. Setting that aside, 'there are good grounds for believing that Purim was unknown to the Jews until after the exile,' and yet 'that they learned to observe it during their captivity in the Bast.'[22] But their captivity in the East _was_ the exile, so how did they know nothing of Purim at the very time when they also learned to celebrate that festival'? However, it is reckoned 'fairly probable' that the Jews borrowed Purim either 'directly from the Babylonians or indirectly through the Persian conquerors of Babylon;' the only question is from which?[23] The Jews probably borrowed Purim in or after the exile. But they also kept Purim before the exile, at least Mr. Frazer thinks that 'the best solution.' It is Jensen's solution, stated, however, only 'in letters to correspondents.'[24] It really seems hardly consistent that Mr. Frazer should both think Purim probably a feast borrowed in or _after_ the exile, and also appear to approve a theory which regards the feast as familiar to the Jews _before_ the exile. Yet that is what he has apparently succeeded in doing. He prefers Jensen's solution, which is this: A fast was held before the feast of Purim.[25] Why?