or Nabuchodonosor II. king of Assyria, son of Nabopolassar, and styled the Great, was associated with his father in the empire, 607 years before Christ. The following year he took Jehoahkim king of Judah prisoner, and proposed to carry him and his subjects in captivity into Babylon; but upon his submission, and promising to hold his kingdom under Nabuchodonosor, he was permitted to remain at Jerusalem. About 603 years before Christ, Jehoahkim attempted to shake off the Assyrian yoke, but without success; and this revolt brought on the general captivity. Nabuchadnezzar having subdued the Ethiopians, Arabians, Idumeans, Philistines, Syrians, Persians, Medes, Assyrians, and almost all Asia, and being puffed up with pride, caused a golden statue to be set up, and commanded all to worship it; but Daniel and his companions having refused to do so, they were cast into the fiery furnace. As Nabuchadnezzar was admiring his own magnificence, he was, by divine sentence, driven from men, and in the Scripture style is said to have eaten grass as an ox, that is, he was seized with the disease called by the Greeks liconthropy, which is a kind of madness that causes persons to run into the fields and streets in the night, and sometimes to suppose themselves to have the heads of oxen, or to be made of glass. At the end of seven years his reason returned to him, and he was restored to his throne and his glory. He died 562 B.C. in the forty-third year of his reign; in the fifth of which happened that eclipse of the sun mentioned by Ptolemy, which is the surest foundation of the chronology of his reign.