This subject is being dealt with as a component of my series on The Princes, the Priests and the Prophets hence the preface of PPP. The link here is provided to connect with the main article.

Our objective remains to see if the princes (the ones who give the orders) the priests (the ones who are supposed to act as intermediaries of God) and the prophets (the media) have changed at any fundamental level. The prophets would be the ones who transmit what is recorded from age to age. In my opinion they continue to embellish the events with their version of reality and condemn God's word. I contend that they all remain the same and there is even a thread to follow as they filter down through the ages. Under the Greeks the two streams were united as both Babylon and Alexandria became Hellenistic subjects and the mysteries of Hellenism centered on Alexandria in Egypt and Pergamum in Turkey. From Pergamum it later went to Rome under the Roman Empire.

Egypt preserved one set of corruption of God's ways. You can see it in their reaction to Moses in Exodus 7 and later his bringing plagues from God. They were able to mimic almost all of them by using Satanic mysteries.

Babylon preserved another stream. We see that in how Nebuchadnezzar had a whole slew of people with strange arts in Daniel 2. He expected them to know both the dream and the interpretation. After the destruction of Babylon they did not just disappear but went underground.

This all came together in Rome through Greek Hellenization. Alexander gave his name to Alexandria but the knowledge came from Egypt. He worshipped in Egypt. At the time of Paul we see the hurrah over Diana of the Ephesians but in Revelation 2, John tells us that Satan's seat was in Pergamos, which was one stop away from Ephesus. The establishment of the centre of the false church at Rome shows that the mysteries were later concentrated there.

Some might ask who was Hellen? She was the immortal daughter of the god Zeus (Jupiter) and the mortal Leda, Queen of Sparta. In a fit of lust Zeus ravished Leda in the form of a swan. As a result she gave birth to Helen and her brother Polydeuces (Pollux), She later had Castor and Clytemnestra from her husband Tyndareus. This is the origin of the Greek brothers Castor and Pollux.

I will attempt to expose the conditions that enabled this thread of development to Rome.

Secular Thread

I will first attempt to trace the links by a secular thread. I plan to present what I understand of how key cultural aspects of society have been preserved from one empire to the other down through the ages. I would have liked to demonstrate that things like socialism, feudalism and capitalism have existed down through the ages but I do not have the time nor expertise. While these may be obvious to someone with at layman's understanding of economics like myself I believe that I need citations and cases to actually prove it. I will hover show that the republican system has it's roots in Rome and it continues to today.

Amorites

Historians treat the story of Babel in Genesis 11:19 as a myth, however there are similar stories attributed to peoples around the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#Confusion_of_tongues . According to these historians the myth may have been inspired by the Babylonian tower temple, which in Babylonian was called Bab-ilu (Gate of God), Hebrew form Babel, or Bavel. The Hebrews would have created a play on words because of the similarity in pronunciation of Babel and balal (to confuse) and came up with the story of Babel according to anthropology. The Amorites created the first Babylonian Empire, not to be confused with the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar. The Amorites followed the Akkadians as the next dominant force in Mesapotamia. They descended from Ham just as Nimrod did but were Canaanites not Cushites.

They appear to have been a nomadic people that came from northern Syria around the area called the mountain of the Amorites . Known Amorites wrote in a dialect of Akkadian but the their proper names are not Akkadian in style but West-Semitic, perhaps Canaanite. Wikipedia says on it's page dedicated to Amorites dated 17:05, 21 November 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorites , In the 18th century BC at Mari Amorite scribes wrote in an Eshnunna dialect of east Semitic Akkadian language. Since the texts contain northwest Semitic forms, words and constructions, the Amorite language is thought to be a Northwest Semitic language . It is believed that they moved into Mesopotamia - possibly driven by a long major drought starting about 2,200 BC during the Akkadian Empire. There are other views e.g one presented on YouTube by History with Cy ,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQtcGXqeXIY . In any case they contributed to to the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur which succeeded the Akkadian empire and they eventually took over native city-states such as Isin and Larsa. In addition to taking over states they established new ones like Babylonia. In 1894 BC (i.e. over a century after Abraham left Ur) a small Amorite-ruled state emerged, which contained the minor administrative town of Babylon. Babylon had maintained that status during the Akkadian Empire but was greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi and became a major capital city. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called the country of Akkad (Mt Akkad in Akkadian), so it drew its significance from the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. After the fall of the Akkadian Empire, the people of Mesopotamia eventually coalesced into two major Akkadian-speaking nations: Assyria in the north, and, a few centuries later, Babylonia in the south.

Egypt became superior to Mesopotamia. Notice this excerpt from and article written by Joshua J. Markpublished on 09 November 2016 for World History Encyclopaedia https://www.ancient.eu/article/967/ancient-egyptian-science--technology/ :

...All across the Egyptian landscape rise immense structures, thousands of years old, which have given rise to many different theories as to their construction. While a number of very significant questions remain unanswered, the simplest explanation for many can be found in ancient Egyptian inscriptions, texts, wall paintings, tomb inscriptions, art, and artifacts: the ancient Egyptians had an extraordinary command of science and technology

and this is supported by Encyclopaedia Britannica on the History of Mesopotamia under caption The achievements of ancient Mesopotamia : https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-Asia/The-character-and-influence-of-ancient-Mesopotamia#ref361123

...Nonetheless, there is nothing in Mesopotamia to match the sophistication of Egyptian art. Science the Mesopotamians had, of a kind, though not in the sense of Greek science. From its beginnings in Sumer before the middle of the 3rd millennium bce, Mesopotamian science was characterized by endless, meticulous enumeration and ordering into columns and series, with the ultimate ideal of including all things in the world but without the wish or ability to synthesize and reduce the material to a system. Not a single general scientific law has been found, and only rarely has the use of analogy been found...

King Hammurabi (of the Hammurabi Code) is the most famous of the Amorite rulers. Ham means brown but Hammurabi means the kinsman is a healer . The code of Hammurabi (among other good stuff) is discussed here on the Crystalinks website  http://www.crystalinks.com/babylonia.html . Some of the images purported to be of Hammurabi are not really him, they are modern impressions. The ones that i have her are genuine as far as I can ascertain. The one on the right is from the stele of the Hammurabi code and what is hanging on his chest comes from the back of his neck and could therefore never be beard. These were Semites (meaning that scholars really don't know where they came from but they spoke the same language as the children of Shem). Hammurabi ruled from about 1792-1750 AD and founded an empire known as the Babylonian Empire, which was named after his capital city. He was Hamitic and the image indicates a blondish woolly beard. The fact that his empire was named after Babylon tells us that he did not change the culture i.e. religion etc. of what Nimrod had passed on, but actually expanded it into his capital city. He could have used the same means as Nimrod to control the people i.e. leverage their superstitions and fears. The website MACROHISTORY : WORLDHISTORY has a webpage dedicated to Sumerian Culture and Hammurabi at Babylon http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch03-ham.htm where it says: Like other emperors, Hammurabi operated a protection racket, offering towns he captured the security of his superior military might in exchange for their obedience and tribute (payment of taxes). He believed that where he had conquered he had put an end to war, and he wanted to protect his subjects from the terror of nomads .

By the time of Samuel we know that kings routinely sought to extend their kingdoms by killing and subduing weaker peoples. No mention is made of colour as a distinction but one family simply conquered another.

Hammurabbi was alive before the Exodus. We identified when Jacob went to Egypt and we know that they spent 215 years there. So what next?

Notice that what Paul said is an estimate but it does give us the general time period.

Assyrians

The Assyrians (those who succeeded the Amorites) were also Semitic and were from the same general area, but for many years had been overshadowed by the other groups/nations around them. Ashur, a god of war, was the chief god of the Assyrians.I propose that their forefather Assur/Ashur was a was hero of some sort and in legend he became a god.

In the beginning of Chapter 1 of The Project Gutenberg eBook, Assyria, Its Princes, Priests and People, by A. H. (Archibald Henry) Sayce http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42033/42033-h/42033-h.htm he says:

Assyria was the name given to the district which had been called 'the land of Assur' by its own inhabitants. Assur, however, had originally been the name, not of a country, but of a city founded in remote times on the western bank of the Tigris, midway between the Greater and the Lesser Zab...
...It so happened that Assyrian mythology knew of a deity who represented the firmament, and was addressed as Sar. The name of Sar came in time to be confused with that of Assur, the divine patron of the Assyrian capital, the result being that Assur signified not only a city and country, but also the supreme deity worshipped by their inhabitants.

Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (reign 668-621 BC, notice Ashur is part of the name) is famous for the world's first known library at Nineveh. Here the Assyrian king stored much of the writing of ancient Mesopotamia, including the Epic of Gilgamesh where people claim that the story of the flood came from.

Assyria was invaded by the Medes and Babylonians who established the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Biblical scholars generally identify Madai (a son of Japheth) with the Medes of Persia or Iran. Chaldea is where Abram came from but he was a Hebrew living in an Amorite dynasty. The later Chaldeans (Nebuchadnezzar et. al.) do not appear to be of the same genetic stock as those at the time of Abram. The closest that I got is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldea under the Wikipedia webpage on Chaldea, caption The Chaldean tribes . The Medes and Babylonians destroyed the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, including the Library of Ashurbanipal.

Babylon and Assyria were basically the same thing culturally. Assyria had conquered the Medes and Babylonians. This is what wikipedia says about Nebuchadnezzar @ 2017-11-11, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_I I:

Nebuchadnezzar was the eldest son and successor of Nabopolassar, an Assyrian official who rebelled and established himself as king of Babylon in 620 BC; the dynasty he established ruled until 539 BC, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by Cyrus the Great. Nebuchadnezzar is first mentioned in 607 BC, during the destruction of Babylon's arch-enemy Assyria, at which point he was already crown prince. In 605 BC he and his ally Cyaxares, ruler of the Medes and Persians, led an army against the Assyrians and Egyptians, who were then occupying Syria, and in the ensuing Battle of Carchemish, Necho II was defeated and Syria and Phoenicia were brought under the control of Babylon.

We will get back to Nebuchadnezzar and Cyaxares later. So if it was in Assyria it was in Babylon and vice versa. Babylon was an old city that had gone through various ups and downs since the time of the Tower of Babel but paganism was a constant. We have traced its religion to Pergamos and from there to Rome by Simon Magus. Simon was a Samaritan. Something special happened in Samaria as seen in II Kings 17:22-41. Notice this especially:

Samaria was a melting pot of religions. Corrupt priests that knew the Old Testament came and taught them all about the God of Israel. They developed a religion where they feared God but did as they pleased. It is an odd mixture which we see all around us today. The official Roman religion was emperor worship. Someone outside had to inject this new religion (the Babylonian Nimrod-Samiramis based one) into the society and provide it with the support to grow. We have the same Babylonian religious system moving to Rome and merging with the secular system.

Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon

The image here shows the Neo-Babylonian Empire, i.e. the one that Nebuchadnezzar is famous for, and the Meda-Persian Empire about the time of Cambyses II. The Medes and Persians absorbed the Babylonian empire from the east and extended it south into Egypt. The Bible calls the system Babylon. Why is the system given this name? The source of the religion of the Roman Catholics is Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the old city with its old customs. Babylonian and Assyrian are two variants of the Akkadian language. It only began to be replaced by Aramaic during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III but remained in use by scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia even during the Hellenistic period, much like Latin is used today. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the first century AD. Babylon remained an important cultural centre despite changing hands during the various empires. Throughout Assyrian domination, Babylonia retained a prominent status and revolted at the slightest indication that it did not. Finally in 627 BC Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar the Chaldean. It lost its independence under Cyrus but after the murder of Darius, it briefly established independence under Nidinta-Bel (Nebuchadnezzar III r. October 521 BC to August 520 BC) only to be displaced by the Persians. Around 514 BC, it again revolted under Arakha but the Persians re-captured it partly destroying its walls. E-Saggila, the great temple of Bel continued to be kept as a source of patriotism until the Greeks established Seleucia as the new capital of Babylonia, and used the ruins of the old city for building materials. It was technologically advanced but spiritually corrupt. From the website of Ellie Crystal, called  crystalinks.com there is a webpage https://www.crystalinks.com/babylonia.html where there is quite a lot of interesting information on Babylon, but I put few of its links here:

Babylonians Tracked Jupiter with Fancy Math, Tablet Reveals Live Science - January 28, 2016 http://www.livescience.com/53518-babylonians-tracked-jupiter-with-fancy-math.html

Babylonian Tablet Holds Oldest Evidence of Trigonometry Live Science - August 24, 2017 https://www.livescience.com/60227-babylonian-clay-tablet-trigonometry.html

Mathematical mystery of ancient Babylonian clay tablet solved PhysOrg - August 24, 2017 https://phys.org/news/2017-08-mathematical-mystery-ancient-babylonian-clay.html

It is now known that the Babylonians (not Neo-Babylonians) invented trigonometry more than 1,000 years before the Greeks. Additionally the stone tablet Plimpton 322 which has four columns and 15 rows of numbers written on it in the cuneiform script of the time using a base 60, or sexagesimal, system shows a highly advanced mathematics. Tablets of squares and cubes, calculated from 1 to 60, have been found at Senkera. They used the the sun-dial, the clepsydra (water clock), the lever and the pulley. A crystal lens, turned on the lathe, was discovered by Austen Henry Layard at Nimrud along with glass vases bearing the name of Sargon, which could explain how they were able to produce writing so fine and how they were able to observe the heavens. They knew the square root of two correctly to seven places (YBC 7289 clay tablet). They also demonstrated knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem well before Pythagoras (tablet translated by Dennis Ramsey and dating to c. 1,900 BC.). I encourage you to read https://www.crystalinks.com/babylonia.html because I cannot cover their achievements at this time.

With regard to idolatry the tower of babel is without comparison. In my opinion the pages at  https://watchjerusalem.co.il/ were a must read on this subject. Not very long but packed with information. It appears that the website is now dead and it's content has been taken over by Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology , https://armstronginstitute.org/ ,  opened during 2022. I have not perused the site yet but from the response when I typed Nebuchadnezzar's tower of babel into the search feature it seems to be exceptional.

Birs Cylinders

The Birs Cylinders are a series of clay cylinders discovered by Sir Henry Rawlinson during the mid-19th century at the Babylonian site of Borsippa. The cylinders were found inserted into the walls of an enormous tower that had been severely damaged. Nebuchadnezzar claims to have repaired this tower. Part of the inscription that Rawlinson translated is:

I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon my great lord has established me in strength, and has urged me to repair his buildings the Tower of Babylon, I have made and finished the Tower of Borsippa had been built by a former king. He had completed 42 [cubits?], but he did not finish its head; from the lapse of time it had become ruined the rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burnt brick had bulged out Merodach, my great lord, inclined my heart to repair the building. I did not change its site, nor did I destroy its foundation platform; but, in a fortunate month, and upon an auspicious day, I undertook the rebuilding I set my hand to build it up, and to finish its summit. As it had been in ancient times, so I built up its structure.

Borsippa Ziggurat is believed to be the tower of Babel by some. Nebuchadnezzar said it was never completed and abandoned. Even in ruin it still stands 52 meters (over 150 feet i.e. as tall as a 15 story building) over the perfectly flat surrounding plain. The cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar II is housed in the Vatican Museum  https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/museo-gregoriano-egizio/sala-viii--antichita-del-vicino-oriente-antico/cilindro-di-nabucodonosor-ii.html .

Tower of Babel Stele

The Tower of Babel Stele is a black ceremonial stone discovered among the ruins of the city of Babylon. After being held in the private collection of Norwegian businessman Martin Schoyen for many years it came under the scrutiny of the Smithsonian leading to a video production by the Smithsonian Channel re-examining the authenticity of the Tower of Babel story. You can see Nebuchadnezzar depicted on the right and the tower on the left with its floor plan above. An extract from the translation of the inscription says:

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon am I: In order to complete [the towers] Etemenanki and Eurmeiminanki, I mobilized all countries everywhere the base I filled in to make a high terrace. I built their structures with bitumen and baked brick throughout. I completed it raising its top to the heaven.

The tablet may actually describe both the Etemenanki and Eurmeiminanki zigaruts. It is primarily dedicated to the tower at Etemenanki but the inscription indicates that the design applies to both. Etemenanki (Sumerian: temple of the foundation of heaven and earth ) was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. E-urmeiminanki means The House that gathers the Seven (Divine Powers) of Heaven and Earth and is the structure that king Nabuchadnezzar II restored. On this tablet we see what Nebuchadnezzars reconstruction of it looked like. It was nearly 100 meters wide and probably just as tall. The inscription its top to the heaven shows the similarity in the thinking of Nebuchadnezzar to the original builders i.e. whose top is in the heavens (Genesis 11:4).

These pagan practices are the ones that Israel adopted followed by Judah as indicated by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The source was Babylon and they are the same rituals practised today.

At this point Ezekiel dates his visions as six years before the destruction of Jerusalem. This is resolved by considering that Jehoiachin's and Zedekiah's reigns run concurrently. Jehoiachin was replaced by Zedekiah after a few months but Ezekiel considers Jehoiachin the rightful heir and uses his name. Zedekiah's reign lasted eleven years and was ended by the destruction of Jerusalem therefore it is now six years to go. It is now 11-5 = 6 years to the destruction of Jerusalem. God ensured that Judah would rest in the seventh year of the prophecy.

The source of the temple plan is Wikimedia Commons   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Plan_of_Soloman%27s_Temple.jpg

In order to understand what Ezekiel is saying we need to understand the layout of the Temple. The Tabernacle had one gate but I have found no such specification for the temple. The gate at the east end (i.e. the gate of the Temple that corresponded to the one in the Tabernacle) became the kings gate and was only opened for him to enter. The Temple was abutting Solomons palace in the south so any gate there would lead directly to the palace but I found no evidence of such a gate. There was no gate behind the most holy place so that leaves only the north gate for normal people to use. If it was from the north gate it was of the people while if it was of the east gate it was of the king.

Nineveh was North of Judah while Babylon was to the East. In Ezekiel the whirlwind came from the north (Ezekiel 1:3) and the vision of things that provoked God to jealousy came from the north too. It was in the inside entrance of the north gate across from Ezekiel. That was the gate of the outer court leading north. The North gate is also called the Damascus Gate and the Shechem Gate. The road from it first leads to Shechem, then to Damascus in Syria. Nineveh was also north so we have false religion coming from the north maybe meaning the busiest part, the part of the people and the part given to commerce. It came from the general direction of Nineveh and Babylon and was of the people (unofficial) instead of directed by the king who represented Christ.

The image that they worshipped also came from the north.

The image might well have been a Madonna (Asherah); by madonna I mean the image of an idealised woman. Wikipedia says The Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night relief) is a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief of the Isin-Larsa or Old-Babylonian period, depicting a winged, nude, goddess-like figure with bird's talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon two lions . The Isin-Larsa period comes shortly after Abraham left Ur. Since before the time of Nebuchadnezzar Judah had been worshipping a female deity, 2 kings 23:6. It would have been the one that originated in Babylon.

The weeping for Tammuz also came from the north. This was weeping for Nimrod after he was killed in the spring.

And along with them men worshipping facing east and backing, hence rejecting, God's Temple and worshipping Nimrod in the Sun.

Jeremiah adds the final element.

Jeremiah was also speaking to the Jews under Babylonian exile. He describes a Christmas tree and this is one reason why I believe that the statue in the gate that Ezekiel spoke of was a Madonna. In any case we clearly have Easter (Tammuz) and Christmas. These suggest that the elements of modern Christianity were in Babylon and would have been part of the melting-pot of what went into Samaria.

The system (power and control over resources) is a bit more diverse than basic feudalism but still separated into a social hierarchy with the king at the top followed by the nobles, then the free citizens and those in military and civil service and finally the slaves at the bottom. The class structure was generally rigid and then as now some were doomed to perpetual enslavement. The debt slave, like the modern mortgage debtor, had the possibility of paying his debts and regaining his freedom but the only hope for the foreign captive (much like todays immigrant) was escape or death.

Babylonian society was divided into three classes: the awilu , a free person of the upper class; the wardu , or slave at the bottom; and the in the middle mushkenu , a free person of low estate. Most slaves were prisoners of war, but the Babylonian citizenry generated some as well. like as punishment for certain offences (much like today's criminalization of poor classes) or submitting to slavery as the only alternative to escape overwhelming debt, but for no longer than three years. These were better off that today's poor who are sometimes condemned to perpetual slave wages for the whole family with the option of school out of the question.

The Medes and Persians

My questions here are (1) did the Medes and Persians erase the Babylonian religion or did it survive and (2) did they change the economic system? The Medes did not just appear out of nowhere. They were around before 800 BC but not as a kingdom. That was a problem. The Satanic system of the Princes needed to be enforced on them. From the Jewish Virtual Library under Medes and Media , https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/medes-and-media :

In datable sources Medes are first mentioned in the historical inscriptions of the Assyrian kings of the end of the ninth century ADE., Shalamaneser III and his son Shamshi-Adad V. The Assyrian kings in military campaigns against Media, which then stretched southeast of Lake Urmia, inflicted heavy losses on its population. Although the Medes did not as yet have a central kingdom, they succeeded in repelling the Assyrian kings in sporadic encounters and by evasive tactics.

People are quite capable of defending themselves through cooperation and solidarity without having a king over them. Nevertheless organised resistance to bullies with kingdoms put pressure on other peoples to conform and want a king. Look at how Old Testament Israel put it:

They wanted a king so that they could be like everybody else and have a man decide right and wrong for them. It seemed too much trouble to get together with God and learn it in solidarity with Him. It is much easier to palm it off to someone else.

Getting back to the Medes, I have an illustrative map of their territory and the Babylonian's earlier in this eaasay. Tiglath-Pileser III eventually managed to conquer the Medes and annex Media to Assyria at the end of the eighth century BC. In the days of Sargon II Media, lead by a local champion called Dayaukku, revolted against Assyria. Dayaukku was eventually captured and exiled and it seems that most of the chiefs capitulated. Dayaukku is undoubtedly identical with Deioces , who is mentioned by Herodotus (1:96101) as a king. Dayaukku was not a king but he lead his people, following this Media did get a king. Katarita (Assyrian: Kastartu) rose to be king of Media in the first half of the seventh century BC and the Medes were able to consolidate their position. Once becoming independent Media joined forces with the Babylonians, attacked Nineveh (capital of Assyria) and conquered it. The present tendency is to identify Katarita with Phraortes king of Media who, according to Herodotus (1:102), reigned 22 years, subdued the Persians, and was killed when advancing on Nineveh.

the Median leader Phraortes was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces. The first act of his reign was to march against Nineveh, intent on destroying it and avenging his father, which he did. With Assyria out of the way Cyaxares took control over the northern part of the Assyrian Empire, as well as over large sections of Iran, Armenia, and Asia Minor but it was not without significant conniving and deceit. Herodotus says that while he was besieging Nineveh he was attacked by a large Scythian army under the command of king Madyas and the Medes were defeated in the ensuing battle. Scythians were nomads. Cyaxares and the Medes invited the greater number of the Scythians to a banquet, at which they made them drunk and murdered them. He then went on to finish with Nineveh. The Babylonains were attempting to come and assist the Medes but arrived after the battle was finished. Cyaxares and the Babylonian king Nabopolassar joined forces after this. Nabopolassar was Nebuchadnezzar's father and at the time of the Babylonian empire Babylon and Media were fast friends. The neo-Babylonian empire (now reduced to Iraq in the current era) did not include Media or Persia (now reduced to Iran).

Astyages was the son of Cyaxares and the last king of Media (584-550 AD). Cyrus king of Persia had revolted against Astyages and defeated him and Media became part of the Persian Empire (550 AD). Notice the feudal approach in managing empires and kingdoms way back throughout history. Sometimes it is referred to as suzerain but it means the same thing i.e. a vassal state controlled by an overlord state. Persia continued to hold an honourable position in the empire hence the laws of the Medes and Persians. In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great invaded Babylonia, turning it into a colony of the first Persian empire called the Achaemenid Empire.

The Achaemenid Empire was the largest empire by percentage of world population in history. 44 percent of the world population, lived under Cyrus rule. It opened up the world to unifying different nations, tribes, languages, cultures and religions. Tolerance was a hallmark of Cyrus. The Cyrus Cylinder first describes how Cyrus and his army conquered Babylon and goes on to promise freedom of religion and worship for the diverse groups of people living in his Empire. It ends by granting permission to those who were brought to Babylon as prisoners of war to return to their homeland. Cyrus opened the door for pieces of Judaism to be incorporated into religions worldwide. The influence of Daniel and the Jewish faith on the world is incalculable. As prime minister in such a vast empire and having survived his persecutions with the aid of the Jewish God, it would be expected that other religions would seek to incorporate tenets of Jewish faith into their own to preserve their importance. The religion of Babylon flourished infused with high profile supernatural evidence.

The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian peoples. The Medes and Persians and peoples of Achaemenid Iran (from Cyrus I to Darius III) are Iranian people. They were speakers of Old Iranian (until 400 BC). Middle Iranian (400 BC 900 AD) languages start from the Persian dynasty of the Sassanian Empire and include the later Parthians and Bactrians.

The Greeks

The map illustrates the Greco-Macedonian Empire which swallowed up the Meda-Persian Empire which had swallowed up the Neo-Babylonian Empire. What I am going to present on the Greeks is actually detailed in Daniel 11 and 12 which also includes the Persians. First I want to demonstrate what God said in Daniel 4:17 [KJV] ... to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men . You can easily verify that by examining the character of Alexander the Great. At the end I will try to cover what the Bible says but there are also other considerations.

On the world map Italy is the boot peninsula in the Mediterranean and Greece is the peninsula and associated islands to its east. The Minoans were the first great Greek civilisation. They did not live on mainland Greece but on the nearby island of Crete. After the Minoans came the Mycenaean civilisation, from mainland Greece. Homer, an ancient Greek poet, told stories of the Mycenaean age in his books The Iliad and The Odyssey . After the Mycenaean age ended in about 1,100 BC, Greece entered a Dark Age.

The Greeks and Macedonians are of the same ethnic group. The first known Macedonian king was Caranus (808-778 BC) who established the Argead dynasty. This would be the time of Neo-Assyria who lead Israel into Captivity. Ancient Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities. The Lelantine War (c. 710 c. 650 BC) is the earliest documented war of that era and was fought over fertile land. By 680 BC a mercantile class had developed since coinage was found from that time. The aristocrats who generally governed the city-states became threatened by the wealth of merchants, who wanted political power and sought to overthrow them. So we see how quality and character is superseded by money, mammon .

Up until the 4^th century BC, Macedonia remained a small kingdom in an area dominated by the great city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes (in Greece not Egypt). First the Athenians fought with the Persians (Battle of Marathon); then the Spartans fought with the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War; then the Spartans and the Athenians fought with each other and with the Thebans and the Persians. Two centuries of fighting left them all so weak and disorganized that the previously obscure city-state called Macedonia overcame them and rose to power. During the reign of the Argead king Philip II (359 - 336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland Greece and Thrace (north east of Macedonia) through a combination of conquest and diplomacy and made Macedonia the greatest European Power at the time. At the Battle of Chaeronea, 338 BC, the Macedonians defeated the alliance of some of the Greek city-states led by Athens and Thebes and subsumed Greece into the Macedonian arena. Philips son Alexander III (356-323 BC) driven by his fathers desire for revenge over the Persians (who defended the Greeks against his father), conquered eastward from Macedonia, absorbed the Persian Empire up to India and conquered Egypt in the South.

According to ANCIENT HISTORY ENCLYCLOPAEDIA , Alexander the Great as a God , by Donald L. Wasson | 28 July 2016, https://www.ancient.eu/article/925/alexander-the-great-as-a-god/

The age-old concept of the divine right of kings allowed that a countrys ruler received his or her power or authority from God. However, few, if any, were delusional enough to actually believe themselves to be a god. An exception to this was Alexander the Great of Macedon. ... By the time of his death in 323 BCE, he was convinced that he was not the son of King Philip II but, instead, was the son of the omnipotent Greek god Zeus.

Did anything really change under the Greeks? Yes it did but not what the Greeks intended. Somewhere around 51-63 AD . . . a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a Macedonian man, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us (Acts 16:9). The first time that the gospel was preached on European soil was in the Macedonian towns Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea. A Macedonian girl named Lydia was the first European to convert to Christianity. The pervasiveness of Greek made spreading the gospel much easier and it all resulted from the Macedonian Empire. Their religious beliefs were basically the same as other Greeks whose main deities consisted of the Greek pantheon. More details of their society can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece . They did not fear God and hence no matter how much mortal brilliance they may have possessed it was in conflict with God and therefore amounted to a cesspool.

History records Alexander the Great as the young military genius from Macedonia (or Macedon) who forged an enormous empire stretching from the Mediterranean in the east to India in the west and died in Babylon (present-day Iraq) at the age of 33. To me he was a delusional, idolatrous butcher who slaughtered millions to quench his lust to satisfy some dream that he was a god or the son of a god. I suppose it depends on your perspective and maybe you could read http://www.livius.org/articles/person/alexander-the-great/ and on his morality perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_relationships_of_Alexander_the_Great and https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/what-was-real-relationship-between-alexander-great-and-hephaestion-006263 to explore the general views on homosexuality that was held by ancient Greeks. Notice the activity taking place on the The Warren Cup (or perhaps you really do not want to). It also has a lot to do with the values that are instilled in you as a child. Macedonia still exists today but at the time of Alexander the kingdom also included parts of Greece, Albania, Kosovo and Bulgaria. Basically he started at his homeland and went east.

His parents were king Phillip II and Queen Olympias. He received a classical education from the famous philosopher Aristotle until he was 16. Aristotle believed in ethics or virtue but they were not absolute. Aristotle thought that the goal of human beings in their search for happiness was to reach Eudemonia . In order to reach this state of Eudemonia, striving for virtue was necessary. As he saw it the way to identify a virtue was that it was a middle ground between two opposing vices. Aristotle was grounded in Science, Metaphysics, and Logic. Metaphysics is defined as the branch of philosophy that deals with the first-principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space . Alexander's military education came from his father. At the age of 16 when he should have been playing with his Playstation, Alexander led his first troops into combat. Alexander was encouraged by his mother to believe that he was a descendant of the gods and perhaps a god, one version of the story is at https://www.ancient.eu/article/925/alexander-the-great-as-a-god/ . Here it is recorded that before he left Macedon for Asia.

His mother pulled him aside and recounted a series of events occurring the night before her wedding. Supposedly, Olympias was asleep in her bedchamber when a clap of thunder awakened her. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning (evidently this was the god Zeus) shot into her room and struck her in her womb - miraculously without harming her - a flash of light immediately followed. Concerning this version of Alexanders birth, the historian Plutarch wrote in his Greek Lives, when Alexander was setting out on his eastern campaign, Olympias accompanied him during the procession, told him in private the secret of his birth, and urged him to entertain ambitions worthy of his parentage.

Alexander was deeply religious as a pagan. Since his father Zeus gave life to all mankind, as his son he had the right to conquer Persians, Egyptians, Indians and anyone else. He sacrificed to the Egyptian god Apis at Memphis believing in lesser gods under Zeus. He respected oracles and omens wherever he encountered them. He believed in both his forefather Heracles (a.k.a Hercules) and his mothers ancestor Achilles. He sacrificed daily and even organized festivals as he travelled through Asia and before and after each battle, he would pray and sacrifice to the gods. Another incident is recorded at the afore mentioned website:

During a banquet, when Alexander was drunk, he killed one of his friends. Immediately, he announced he would commit suicide, which would no doubt result in the violent disintegration of the army. Anyone agreed that this had to be avoided at all costs, and a philosopher convinced the son of Zeus that he had done nothing wrong. After all, he was a king and kings made laws, hence kings were above the law, and anything was allowed if it was done by a king, as if he were justice incarnated.

From time immemorial self-deification has been a central policy to control masses of divergent people. It was repeated by the ruler cult of the Hellenistic kings after Alexander and by Roman emperors. This strategy to create unity in the armies, groups, clans and kingdoms is still in use today. People still employ religious dogmas to justify a god given right to rule (or rather dominate and oppress) others.

At 19 (In 336 AD) Phillip II was assassinated by his bodyguard, and Alexander ascended to the throne. The wars and conquests are laid out in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_Alexander_the_Great and https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Battle_of_Ipsus

Two years after his father died he set out to complete his fathers plans for conquering Persia and by 330 AD all of Persia and Asia Minor was under his control . Apparently he was a mighty hunter and never lost a battle even when outnumbered against superior Persian forces. By 327 AD, he had conquered as far as northern India. Exhausted and tired of killing after eight years, his army refused to go farther but Alexander still wanted more. From India he sent much of his army to Carmania (in modern Iran) with his general Craterus, and commissioned a fleet to explore the Persian Gulf shore under his admiral Nearchus, but he led the rest of his forces back home through the Gedrosian Desert (now part of Iran and Pakistan). According to Plutarch it took 60 days and Alexander lost three-quarters of his army due to conditions along the way. After his march Alexander began his reign of terror which our main source, the Greek historian Arrian of Nicomedia, calls harsher (Greek: oxyteros) reign. Alexander now ordered the executions of several governors whom he suspected of treason.

Early in 324 AD , he returned to Persepolis and Susa where he ordered a mass wedding. He required his officers to marry Iranian ladies and he married to two princesses. Alexander was already married to Roxana (or Roxanne) a Sogdian princess of Bactria. In October the same year, Alexander's reputed lover Hephaestion died in Ecbatana. Hephaestion was a friend from childhood, the son of a Macedonian nobleman and a general in the army. Alexander was shattered and as a consolation, he massacred the Cossaeans, a mountain tribe in the Zagros. The king also ordered his subjects to sacrifice to Hephaestion as if he were a demigod.

In the spring of 323 AD , Alexander wanted to return to Babylon, where his fleet and army were gathering to conquer Arabia but he became ill and died on 11 June. The Hellenistic period begins with his death and ends with the emergence of the Roman Empire at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC . At Alexander's death The empire was placed under a regent called Perdiccas to whom Alexander had given his signet ring, and the territories were divided among Alexander's generals known as the Diadochi or successors . Lysimachus took Thrace and much of Asia Minor; Cassander, Macedonia and Greece; Ptolemy Egypt, Palestine, Cilicia, Petra, and Cyprus while Seleucus took the rest of Asia encompassing Syria, Babylon, Persia, and India. all in that same year that he died. Alexanders biological successors were his brother Arridaeus (mentally disabled) and Roxanes yet unborn son (who was called Alexander) who were named joint kings with Perdiccas as regent. The fighting began before Alexander was buried, which was seven days after his death.

When Perdiccas attempted to crush Ptolemy of Egypt, Perdiccas was killed by his own troops (c. 321 or 320 BC) and Antipater was named as the new regent. Then when Antipater died in 319, the civil war worsened as important generals including, Seleucus, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Craterus, Eumenes, Cassander and Lysimachus jostled for positions. Soon Antigonus I Monophthalmus (the One-Eyed ) became the strong man as he attempted to re-establish the Empire. In the Third War of the Diadochi in 314 BC he fought against Ptolemy, Cassander and Lysimachus. This ended by a treaty in 311. Next he attacked Seleucus who defeated him in the Babylonian War of 311-309 BC. In 309 BC Alexanders now 13 year old son Alexander IV and his mother Roxana were murdered under instructions from Cassander which began a free for all struggle for the Empire and ended any hope of its re-establishment. Ptolemy consolidated his control of Egypt, Seleucus grabbed what he could from the Babylonian region, Cassander took Macedon, and Lysimachus took Thrace but Antigonus remained in control of the remainder from Anatolia around to Egypt. Seleucus' wars with India (305 - 303 BC) were fought over territories of the Indus River basin captured by Alexander. Seleucus ended them by marrying his daughter to king Chandragupta, and India territories ceased to be part of the Hellenistic realm. Antigonus now focussed on conquering Cassander who held counsel with Lysimachus, and they agreed to seek out Ptolemy and Seleucus, asking them to join in neutralizing the Antigonid threat. This lead to The Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC where Antigonus was defeated and killed by the coalition and the region was once again divided into four. Antigonus' son Demetrius I survived and later seized control of Macedon for a few years but died a prisoner of Seleucus I Nicator. Demetrius's son Antigonus II was able to establish the family's control over the old Kingdom of Macedon, as well as over most of the Greek city-states, by 276 BC.

The Fourth Macedonian War ended at the Battle of Pydna in 148 BC when Rome annihilated the forces of Macedon. By this time Alexander's former empire had been split up into three rival world powers: The Antigonid dynasty ruled the west from Macedon controlling Greece, the Seleucid Empire controlled the east including most of Turkey and Asia Minor from Babylon, while the Ptolmeic Kingdom was controlled from Egypt. Most of the territory was controlled by Seleucids and most importantly they controlled both Jerusalem and Babylon. Seleucus received Babylonia in 321 BC after helping to assassinate Perdicas.

The final bid to restore Alexander's former empire began when Seleucids neutralized Ptolemic Egypt at the Battle of Panium (later Caesarea Philippi) in 198 BC as part of the Fifth Syrian War. Meanwhile the Romans saw the threat of allowing Philip to continue attacking their Greek client states and attacked Macedon over Greece, ultimately defeating Phillip V of Macedon In 197 at the Battle of Cynoscephalae. The Selecuids saw an opening and invaded Greece. At the battles of Thermopylae (191 BC) and Magnesia (190 BC), Antiochus (the Seleucid) was soundly whipped by the Romans and he was compelled to make peace and sign the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC) where his heir became a political hostage of the Roman Republic. When the successor of Philip V i.e. the Macedonian king, tried to recapture Greece, Rome invaded Greece, and waged war on Macedon and its allies. The fighting climaxed at the battle of Pydna mentioned above and Rome was now in control of Alexanders empire. Does any of this sound familiar when you replace names with those of Spain, France, Britain and the like?

So Alexander pursued the ways of the princes, priests and prophets but God used him to set the stage for the gospel going out to gentiles. Cyrus freed the Jews and rebuilt the temple for Christ. Alexander now left a world where Greek was spoken everywhere. Translation of the Old testament into Greek (the Septuagint or LXX) was completed by 132 BC. The classical Greek period spanned the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC. At first they spoke different dialects. This was followed by the Greek of Alexander the Great's time, which we know as Biblical Greek. He spread the language so far east that it was adopted by most of the ancient world as a second language. The dominance of Greek continued on through to the Byzantine Empire when Byzantine Greek replaced Hellenistic Greek. The Byzantine Empire began when Constantinople was established in 330 AD and fell in 1,453 AD when the Turks defeated the city. Today, Constantinople is known as Istanbul. The New Testament, by the time of John was also found in Greek. Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Luke's writings were directed towards most excellent Theophilus. This is a Greek name and title for a person of rank in the Roman government (see Acts 23:26; 24:30). Luke was most likely a Greek speaking gentile writing to another Greek speaking gentile, Theophilus. Note that the native language of the Roman people is Latin, not Greek, but Greek was the language of the empire. Matthew was collecting taxes from Jews for the Roman government. To communicate with Jews he needed to know Aramaic but to report to the Roman officials he needed to know Greek, not Latin. Mark was written in Greek rather than Aramaic to gentiles or Greek speaking Jews. Mark interprets Aramaic phrases for the readers at several points (5:41, 7:34, 14:36, 15:34) but that would have been unnecessary for Jews in Palestine. The earliest manuscripts of the gospel of John are also in Greek. For a millennium, the Bible in Greek stood on a solid foundation for God to spread the gospel to the ends of the Earth using a single language. The newest language used is English.

Roman times

The earliest known republics include ancient Athens and the Roman Republic (509 - 27 BC). Philosophers and politicians like Machiavelli (Italy), Montesquieu (France), Adams (Britain), and Madison (USA), relied heavily on classical Greek and Roman records. Nineveh shows that you can convert a king and save a nation but how do you convert an institution like money? In my opinion history shows the path to serving mammon (re. Matthew 6:21-25) as (1) get people to want a king (2) move to a republic with the illusion of equity (3) corporate control by serving mammon. I said that the Macedonian Empire was reduced to Antigonids, Seleucids and Ptolemics by the time of the battle of Pydna and by that time Rome was in the republic stage. At the battles of Thermopylae (191 BC) and Magnesia (190 BC) they secured the Seleucids, The Macedonians were brought to heel in the Macedonian Wars (214 - 148 BC) ending with the battle of Pydna with the final nail in the Greeks coffin at the Battle of Corinth (146 BC) when they crushed the rebellion spearheaded by a confederation of Greek city states, called the Achaean League. Finally in 31 BC Augustus defeated Cleopatra VII, the Greek Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, dominating all the Greek empire but the Greek language and culture continued to be dominant in the Roman Empire for centuries. The Byzantine Empire was generally Greek-speaking. Romes religion was always an adaptation of the Greek pantheon so things remained the same.

The Roman Empire started in Italy. They conquered Eastward to take over from the Greeks, went westward to England and down around the top of Africa. The Bible refers to all of these kings throughout history that took over Jerusalem while it had the Temple as beasts because they rejected God's government. None of them restored the true religion but encouraged false ones that replaced God with idols. All controlled Jerusalem and Babylon. All were insignificant during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. None of them ruled as tenants of the true God. The final incarnation of the system is the Romans.

Like the Greek's the Roman history is established in superstitious nonsense and violence. It begins with the story of Romulus and Remus. Romulus and Remus were the twin sons of Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, the king of Alba Longa. Some time before the twins were born, Numitors brother Amulius usurped the throne, murdered Numitor's son, and condemned Rhea to perpetual virginity by consecrating her a Vestal. Vestals or Vestal Virgins were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth i.e. fire. Rhea, however, became pregnant, supposedly by the god Mars. Amulius had her imprisoned, and when she gave birth ordered his servants to drown the twins in the Tiber. His servants left the twins along the riverbank where a she-wolf happened upon the twins. She suckled and cared for them until they were found by the herdsman Faustulus and his wife, Acca Larentia and so the children grew up among the shepherds and hill-folk. When they eventually came to know their origin, they overthrew and killed Amulius and restored Numitor to the throne then they set out to establish a city of their own. They returned to the hills overlooking the Tiber but could not agree on which hill should house the new city. Somehow Remus was killed leaving Romullus who started Rome.

Romulus built the city and with the aid of Numitor his grandfather convinced the people to accept him as king and so Rome was founded as a kingdom (common historical estimates are between 758 and 728 BC) and ended with the overthrow of the kings and the establishment of the Republic circa 509 BC. Hence Rome began over 400 years before the Greco-Macedonian Empire and this puts the origins of both the Greeks and the Romans around the time of Neo-Assyria who lead Israel into Captivity. It appears that all of the beasts were embryonic during the Neo-Assyrian Empire but were brought to prominence at different times. In their time they would never have been considered as conquerors of the world. Romulus then divided the people into three tribes: the Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres. His established officials for government was that each tribe was headed by a tribune , and was further divided into ten curiae, or wards each of which was headed by a curio . It is not known how the tribes and curiae were taxed, but as for the military, each curia was responsible for providing one hundred foot soldiers known as a century , and ten cavalry. Of the three thousand cavalry that would be generated three hundred were selected as the Celeres , the swift , and formed the royal bodyguard. He chose one hundred men from the leading families and established the Roman senate which was his advisors. He called these men patres (city fathers) and their descendants came to be known as patricians . The Latin word pope is papas in Greek from pappas meaning father. The other class, known as the plebs or plebeians , consisted of everybody else. Hence clergy (fathers) and laity is founded in a Roman political way of dividing people by class .

The academic view is that the early Roman family was divided into clans represented by a male patriarch, called a pater (the Latin word for father ). The patres from the leading clans were selected to be the board of elders that would become the Roman senate. Over time, the patres came to recognize the need for a single leader, and so they elected a king. When the king died, that sovereign power reverted to the patres who would elect another king.

To encourage the growth of the city Romulus established an asylum for fugitives where freemen and slaves alike could claim protection and seek Roman citizenship. The new city became filled with young, unmarried men. Romulus knew that without children the new city would eventually fail and the neighbouring cities did not allow intermarriage with them. Romulus announced a magnificent festival and games, and invited the people of the neighbouring cities to attend. The Sabines in particular came in droves. At a prearranged signal the men absconded with marriageable women. In the ensuing war the bloodshed finally ended when the Sabine women inserted themselves between the two armies pleading because on one side was their fathers and brothers, and on the other their husbands. The leaders, Romulus and Tatius (the Sabine) agreed to form one community, to be jointly ruled by Romulus and Tatius. Tatius subsequently was killed.

Official Roman history can be divided into two time periods: Roman Republic (509 BC - 27 BC) and Roman Empire (27 BC - 455 AD). A senate and an assembly, the Curiate Assembly , were both established when the city of Rome was founded (whenever that really was). Assemblies were democratic institutions i.e. ordinary citizens as opposed to elected representatives, would cast all ballots. The People of Rome were organized into thirty curiae representing the thirty original clans based on the three original tribes. The Curiate Assembly passed all legislation and its primary purpose was to elect new kings. The Roman Senate was first started as an advisory group for the Roman kings. When the kings were expelled from Rome and the Republic was formed, the Senate became the supreme governing body and elected the chief executives, called consuls , who ruled the Roman Republic.

Each year, a senate composed of patricians elected these consuls to serve jointly for a one-year term . At this time, lower-class citizens, or plebeians, had virtually no say in the government. Both men and women were citizens in the Roman Republic, but only men could vote. The consuls alternated in holding absolute power each month, and that extended over Rome, Italy, and the provinces.

There was a marriage of old money and the army. The consuls were primarily generals who led Romes armies in war. They were therefore elected by the Centuriate Assembly - basically the Roman army organized into a voting body. The Centuriate Assembly (Latin: Comitia Centuriata) got its name because it originally divided Roman citizens into groups of one hundred men by classes. The Centuries were based originally on military status, but later was based on wealth. Each century had one vote determined by majority ballot. The vote of the majority of centuries determined the outcome. Those who are not familiar with Eisenhower's military-industrial complex might want to familiarise themselves with it to see if the roman approach still persists.

At first the patricians enjoyed a monopoly of power (the consulship, the Senate, and all religious offices), whereas the plebeians started with nothing but voting rights in the assemblies: the Tribal Assembly ( Citizen's Assembly / comitia tributa ), a nonmilitary civilian assembly and for soldiers the Centuriate Assembly. The president of the Tribal Assembly was usually a Consul, and under him the assembly elected Quaestors (basically auditors), Curule Aediles (the Tribune's assistant), and Military Tribunes. Eventually, most legislative powers were transferred to another assembly, the Plebeian Consul ( Assembly of the Commoners ). This is traced back to 494 BC when the disgruntled plebeians withdrew from their alliance with the patricians and elected their own officials for their future protection. Because the state was constantly threatened by war and the internal instability was increasing the Senate was forced to allow the plebeians to have their own officials, the tribunes of the plebs elected by the Plebeian Consul. It is argued that the balance between the senate, the legislative branch i.e. those that make the laws, and consuls, the executive branch i.e. those that enforce the laws, was destabilised by the introduction of the Plebeian Consul which led to the collapse of the republic, and the founding of the Roman Empire in 27 BC. Under the empire, the powers that had been held by the assemblies (both plebeian and patrician) were transferred to the senate. I see that as an admission that the wealthy hated having to be restrained by the needs of the poor and found a way around it. Bear in mind that the senate was basically the patricians who had the ear of the emperor and were his advisors. The consuls became figureheads while the Emperor acted as the supreme authority. Eventually the assemblies were abandoned altogether. The empire was not a republic and the problem of representation had come full circle. Patricians and plebeians did not intermarry. By the 3 ^rd century AD the plebeians gained equal voting rights with the patricians but the value of the voting right was related to wealth because the Roman assemblies were organized by property qualifications. As mentioned earlier, the plebeians came to elect their own representatives, called tribunes, who wielded the power to veto measures passed by the senate. Under the republic, even though the plebeians continued to gain power the patricians were still able to use their wealth to buy control and influence over elected leaders. The powers of the senate under the empire brought the power of the Patricians back to full force.

The empire was made up of Rome and its municipiae (municipalities). The municipalities were established on the basis of charters that spelled out the powers of its community, but always allowed for appeal to Rome. Typically, the freemen of each community held the right to vote only locally. Each municipality had a local senate (curia) that formulated ordinances and a local assembly (comitia / ekklesia) that chose the magistrates. It was not until the Edict of Caracalla issued in AD 212 by the Roman Emperor Caracalla, which declared that all free men in the Roman Empire were to be given full Roman citizenship and all free women in the Empire were given the same that there was full suffrage. Most municipalities were self-governed and had a senate that formulated ordinances and an assembly that chose the magistrates. Senators were not elected but appointed by the consuls, and later by special magistrates called censors. Magistrates were usually automatically appointed to the Senate after they served their term.

Many modern historians use the term comitia tributa or comitia populi tributa (comitia tributa of the people) to label meetings by the tribes which involved the whole of the Roman people (populus) whereas the term concilium plebis or concilium plebis tributum (plebeian council by the tribes) for those assemblies which were exclusively for the plebeians, however this distinction is not recorded in ancient history. The main legislative assembly of the late Republic was the Comitia Tributa was a civilian assembly which elected magistrates who did not exercise imperium (absolute power) like consuls. This assembly was organised around the voting unit of the tribe or clan – the territory to which each Roman citizen belonged by birth or legal act. The number grew with Roman conquest, but by 231 BC it was fixed at 35, comprising four urban and 31 rural tribes. The voting principle was identical to the one applied in the case of the Comitia Centuriata i.e. the one governing the army. The majority of votes from one tribe constituted the vote of that tribe, and the majority of tribes then determined the final outcome. As in the case of the Comitia Centuriata, it is clear that this assembly did not guarantee equal participation to all citizens, as it was skewed towards an obvious bias in favour of the rural tribes. The citizens registered in the four urban tribes had no real chance to prevail.

In the early Roman Republic there were three kinds of land: private land, common pasture, and public land or land of the public domain, which was rented to private entrepreneurs. By the second century BC, however, much of the public land was treated by its occupants as though it were private. From very early laws had been implemented to limit the amount which could be occupied but the wealthy circumvented these and amassed gigantic holdings especially fuelled by the demand for olive products, wine and meat. Small farmers were steadily forced to abandon their their holdings as the huge landowners pressed their competitive advantage. While the small farmers had to satisfy increasing obligations for military service that kept them away from home the wealthy bought slaves and hired managers to operate their holdings. As would be expected it created an impoverished and increasingly landless group that migrated to the cities in search of employment.

Since Rome is well accepted as the representation of the beast then it might be wise to look for these same traits and issues in its subsequent evolutions.

After Rome

I have never read Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith but I have scanned through parts of it courtesy of The Pennsylvania State University. They have provided AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith AN ELECTRONIC CLASSICS SERIES PUBLICATION , https://www.rrojasdatabank.info/Wealth-Nations.pdf . One thing that links Feudalism back to Nimrod is the Comitatus . Though practised widely it is particularly associated with Germanic peoples. According to Wikipedia @ 2018-06-08 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comitatus

...As described in the Roman historian Tacitus's treatise Germania (98.AD), the comitatus is the bond existing between a Germanic warrior and his Lord, ensuring that the former never leaves the field of battle before the latter. The translation is as follows:

  Moreover, to survive the leader and retreat from the battlefield is a lifelong disgrace and infamy

Tacitus stressed the abnegation of the follower, and his dependence on his patron, whose prestige rested on his ability to successfully wage war, and thus provide a military training for his followers.[3] Loyalty was met by material reward...

By the way the original occupants of Britain are not Germanic but Celtic. I will get back to that later in the series. Instead if dependence on God this stresses dependence on rich men or rather riches. This proliferated Europe after the fall of the Roman empire and is still with us today. Colonisation has created an international comitatus, where nations blindly follow the dictates of an institution which is dominated by a nation, which is in turn dominated by  some cabal, which is in turn dominated by some individual. The precise nation, cabal and individual shifts over time but it remains within the same narrow scope with the same basic ideology. We have seen it operate through the crusades and Islamic Jihad but most recently through Zionism. In its present incarnation they have organised the world so that finance (which includes banking, the stock exchange etc.) controls politics, production, distribution and everything else. We hear of nations that are filthy rich in terms of resources being desperately poor because of a lack of foreign direct investment and the iron hand that enforces it is the military industrial complex. Their god is a god of finance but the old Biblical name for it is mammon. The Bible tells us No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (Matthew 6:24 [KJV]). The approach has been modernised but the objective is still dominance and hegemony just like Nimrod.

The Kings of the North and South

Daniel 11 strings together the fortunes of the king of the north and the king of the south. The north generally relates to Babylon and the South to Egypt but is more precisely north of Jerusalem and south of Jerusalem. Prophecy outlines that these are interrelated and merged.

So the Bible shows that there is a union of the ancient cultures coming together in Rome. At the same time it goes beyond what has ever existed because a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour . This is a god that was not there for the king of the north or the king of the south before.

Acknowledgements

By default dictionary definitions are from Mickelson's Enhanced Strong's Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries (Mickelson).

The basic template for my maps was acquired from Wikimedia Commons, By STyx - Own work, Public Domain, Link

https://eet.pixel-online.org/files/etranslation/original/The%20Wealth%20of%20Nations.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_law

https://famguardian.org/Publications/PropertyRights/agerpub.html

http://www.penfield.edu/webpages/jgiotto/onlinetextbook.cfm?subpage=1525827

https://www.ancient.eu/Mesopotamia/

https://study.com/academy/lesson/hammurabi-of-babylon-code-summary-stele.html

https://tavaana.org/en/content/cyrus-great-and-religious-tolerance

https://www.bible-history.com/babylonia/BabyloniaSocial_Hierarchy.htm

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/medes-and-media

http://www.livius.org/articles/person/cyaxares/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/alexander-the-great-dies

http://www.livius.org/articles/person/alexander-the-great

http://www.ushistory.org/civ/6a.asp

https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Rome#ref212990

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiate_Assembly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_assemblies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate

http://www.projecthistoryteacher.com/2008/03/roman-assemblies-during-republic.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuriate_Assembly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_assembly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestal_Virgin

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/ConciseMacedonia/timeline.html