In consequence of these discussions, Sir Isaac was prevailed upon to prepare his larger work for the press. He had nearly completed it at the time of his death, and it was published in 1728, under the title of _The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms amended, to which is prefixed a short Chronicle_, from the first memory of Things in Europe _to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great_. It was dedicated to the queen by Mr. Conduit, and consists of six chapters: 1. On the Chronology of the Greeks;[98] 2. Of the Empire of Egypt; 3. Of the Assyrian Empire; 4. Of the two contemporary Empires of the Babylonians and Medes; 5. A Description of the Temple of Solomon; 6. Of the Empire of the Persians. The sixth chapter was not copied out with the other five, which makes it doubtful whether or not it was intended for publication; but as it was found among his papers, and appeared to be a continuation of the same work, it was thought right to add it to the other five chapters.[99] After the death of Newton, Dr. Halley, who had not yet seen the larger work, felt himself called upon, both as astronomer-royal and as the friend of the author, to reply to the first and last dissertations of Father Souciet, which were chiefly astronomical; and in two papers printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1727,[100] he has done this in a most convincing and learned argument. Among the supporters of the views of Newton, we may enumerate Dr. Reid, Nauze, and some other writers; and among its opponents, M. Freret, who left behind him a posthumous work on the subject, M. Fourmond, Mr. A. Bedford, Dr. Shuckford, Dr. Middleton, Whiston, and the late M. Delambre. The object of M. Fourmond is to show the uncertainty of the astronomical argument, arising on the one hand from the vague account of the ancient sphere as given by Hipparchus; and, on the other, from the extreme rudeness of ancient astronomical observations. Delambre has taken a similar view of the subject: he regards the observations of ancient astronomers as too incorrect to form the basis of a system of chronology; and he maintains, that if we admit the accuracy of the details in the sphere of Eudoxus, and suppose them all to belong to the same epoch, all the stars which it contains ought at that epoch to be found in the place where they are marked, and we might thence verify the accuracy, and ascertain the state of the observations. It follows, however, from such an examination, that the sphere would indicate almost as many different epochs as it contains stars. Some of them even had not, in the time of Eudoxus, arrived at the position which had been for a long time attributed to them, and will not even reach it for three hundred years to come, and on this account he considers it impossible to deduce any chronological conclusions from such a rude mass of errors.