The numbers found in the earlier, prophetic sources are magnified, and at every point it is easy to recognize the influence of the Chronicler's familiarity with the splendor and magnificence of the great Persian and Greek empires, and of his desire to inspire his fellow-Jews with national pride and with loyalty to their religious institutions. II. The Chronicler's Conception of the Restoration. Fortunately the Chronicler did not depend entirely upon traditions current in his day, or upon his own conceptions of the early history, but quoted freely from earlier sources. As a result a large portion of the prophetic history of Samuel and Kings is reproduced verbatim in I and II Chronicles. For the Persian period, regarding which he is our chief authority, he apparently quoted from three or four documents. In Ezra 4:7-23 is found a brief description in Aramaic of the opposition of Judah's neighbors to the rebuilding of the walls, probably in the days of Nehemiah. In Ezra 5 and 6 there is another long quotation from an Aramaic document that describes a similar attempt to put a stop to the rebuilding of the temple in the days of Haggai and Zechariah. The Chronicler evidently believed that the second temple was rebuilt, not by the people of the land to whom Haggai and Zechariah spoke, but by Jewish exiles who on the accession of Cyrus had returned in great numbers from Babylon. He assumed that Judah had been depopulated during the Babylonian exile, and that the only people left in Palestine were the heathen and the hated Samaritans. He also pictures the return of the exiles, not as that of a handful of courageous patriots, but of a vast company laden with rich gifts and guarded by Persian soldiers.