MATTHIAS, was born in Hungary, and became a Lutheran minister at Presburg, and historiographer to the Emperor Charles VI. Among his works is a History of Hungary, which was so much admired that the emperor gave him letters of nobility; and notwithstanding his being a Lutheran, the pope, in 1736, sent him his picture and several large gold medals. He was a member of the Royal Society of London, and of the academies of Berlin and Petersburg; and died in 1749, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

Belus, the supreme god of the ancient Chaldeans or Babylonians. He was the reputed founder of the Babylonian empire, and is supposed to be the Nimrod of Scripture, as well as identical with the Phoenician Baal. He had a temple erected to him in the city of Babylon, on the uppermost range of the famous tower of Babel, in which there were many statues of the god, including one of massive gold forty feet in height. This temple, with its riches, was in existence till the time of Xerxes; but the Persian monarch, on his return from his unfortunate expedition into Greece, demolished it, and carried off the immense wealth which it contained. It was the statue of this god which Nebuchadnezzar set up and dedicated in the plain of Dura, on his return from the Jewish war.