No female type of character has given more brilliant inspiration to the artist or been made more glowingly alive on canvas than Judith. Her story, however, is set down by competent scholars as a work of fiction. The incidents recorded in it have so many anachronisms as to time and place, the historical characters introduced are in combinations and relations so interfering with authentic history, that such authorities as Professor Winer,[5] of Leipsic, and others, do not hesitate to assign it to the realm of romance. This Apocryphal book is, in fact, one of the few sparse blossoms of æsthetic literature among the Jewish nation. It is a story ages before the time of the tales of the _Decameron_, but as purely a romance. Considered in this light, it is nobly done and of remarkable beauty. The character of Judith is a striking and picturesque creation, of which any modern artist might be proud. It illustrates quite as powerfully as a true story the lofty and heroic type of womanhood which was the result of the Mosaic institutions, and the reverence in which such women were held by the highest authorities of the nation. [5] Winer's Bible Dictionary, art. _Judith_. The author begins with the account of a destructive and terrible war which is being waged on the Jewish nation for refusing to serve in the armies of one Nabuchodonosor, king of Assyria, in an attack on the king of the Medes and Persians. All the names of this so-called war, and all the events as narrated, are out of joint with received history, and clearly as much creations of the writer's fancy as the Arabian Nights. It is stated that the Jews had just returned from the Babylonian captivity, and brought back their sacred vessels, and restored their temple worship after the long defilement of heathen servitude. But it is a matter of undisputed history that Nabuchodonosor was the king who carried the nation into captivity, and no other monarch of the name is known to history who performed deeds at all like those here narrated. The story goes on to state how, to punish the Jews for not becoming his soldiers in the war, this king sent his chief commander, Holofernes, to carry destruction over their country. The mighty army of this general, and its ravages over the surrounding country, are set forth with an Oriental luxury of amplification. They come at last and straitly besiege the city of Bethulia. Whether this is a fictitious name for a real city, or whether it is a supposititious city, the creation of the author's imagination, critics are not fully decided; the story is just as pretty on one hypothesis as the other. The water being cut off, the people, suffering and dying of thirst, beset the chief-priests and elders to surrender the city to save their lives. Ozias, the chief ruler, temporizes, recommends five days of prayer; if before that time the God of Israel does not interpose, he promises to surrender.