Other nations meantime were progressing in civilization--literature, the art of warfare, etc. Greece was gaining laurels. Homer appeared. Hesiod wrote about 900 B.C. Tyrtæus's Elegies, Archilochus's Satires, etc., about 700 B.C. The Persians and Romans were rising and making rapid progress and conquest, soon to sweep smaller peoples and nations aside. These heathen made conquests, gained victories, transplanted the captives, and were altogether far more prosperous and successful with their idols than the Hebrews were with their God. Nothing else better proves that the struggles for supremacy among the human families were perfectly natural, each side depending always on their leaders, their skill in fighting, their bravery, and their organization; that their Gods, their idols, their oracles, and their priests played but a small part in the transactions of life; and that all the gods, whether idols, or mythological, or Jehovistic, and no matter of what nationality, had all about the same material value, power, and importance. From our modern standpoint all the gods may be classed in one category. We may safely pronounce them to be creatures of imagination, sprung into existence through ignorance, fears, and superstition. They are all alike false, frivolous, and foolish. They have not a particle of truth in them. And the Gods that are now held in such high esteem by many people, are no better than the Chaldean idols. Judah is still struggling to retain her grip on her national life. Every effort prolongs the agony. Hezekiah is king 717 B.C. Isaiah is the prophet. Romantic dreamer, songster, critic, and man of visions, he sees distress, ruin, and misery before him; recalls the glories of the past, but sees none of the faults; sees the greatness of the nation of Solomon, David, and Saul, and now beholds the national degradation. He laments this dreadful condition with a bitterness of feeling. Then he hopes against hope that something will happen in the future that will bring about a happy state of his nation and reproduce the golden prosperity of those glittering ages that are gone. This man is a close observer, a visionary man, and a critic. He writes and sings of his own people, of his own country. In the introduction which he gives himself in Isaiah i and ii, he presents his vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem, etc. He reproaches them for their sin, iniquity, corruption, etc.: "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers" (i, 7). His dream and hope of the future: "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (ii, 4).