and their apprehensions were alternately raised by the various reports
of hostilities which reached their ears. The news of the first
victories of the Persians aroused in the exiled Jews the idea of speedy
deliverance, and Cyrus clearly appeared to them as the hero chosen by
Jahveh to reinstate them in the country, of their forefathers.

The number of the Jewish exiles, which perhaps at first had not exceeded
20,000* had largely increased in the half-century of their captivity,
and even if numerically they were of no great importance, their social
condition entitled them to be considered as the _élite_ of all Israel.

* The body of exiles of 597 consisted of ten thousand
persons, of whom seven thousand belonged to the wealthy, and
one thousand to the artisan class, while the remainder
consisted of people attached to the court (2 Kings xxiv. 14-
16). In the body of 587 are reckoned three thousand and
twenty-three inhabitants of Judah, and eight hundred and
thirty-two dwellers in Jerusalem. But the body of exiles of
581 numbers only seven hundred and forty-five persons (Jer.
lii. 30). These numbers are sufficiently moderate to be
possibly exact, but they are far from being certain.

There had at first been the two kings, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, their
families, the aristocracy of Judah, the priests and pontiff of the
temple, the prophets, the most skilled of the artisan class and the
soldiery. Though distributed over Babylon and the neighbouring cities,
we know from authentic sources of only one of their settlements, that
of Tell-Abîb on the Chebar* though many of the Jewish colonies which
flourished thereabouts in Roman times could undoubtedly trace their
origin to the days of the captivity; one legend found in the Talmud