SOLOMON (Hebrew rith eloma for Sh6lomOn, "man of peace" ; the English form follows the (iiA.zikkoni of N.T. and Josephus ; the Latin Salomo agrees with cr.Aciii.A.o.w, one of several variant forms shown in MSS. of the LXX.), son of David by Bathsheba, and his successor in the kingdom of Israel. The reign of Solomon has been sketched in ISRAEL (vol. xiii. p. 405), and his relation to the philosophical and proverbial literature of the Hebrews, the so-called chokma, or " wisdom," has been critically considered in the article PROVERBS. The political system of Solomon fell to pieces at his death, but the fame of his wisdom and splendour in succeeding generations was all the greater that none of his successors at Jerusalem was in a position to rival him. The many floating and fragmentary notes of various dates that have found a place in the account of his reign in the book of KINGS (q.v.) show how much Hebrew tradition was occupied with the monarch under whom the throne of Israel reached its highest glory; and that time only magnified in popular imagination the proportions of so striking a figure appears alike in the unfriendly picture of Solomon in the Song of Solomon (originally, it would seem, sketched in the Northern kingdom, however much it may have been retouched and overlaid by additions of later date - see CANTICLES) and in the monologue of ECCLESIASTES (q.v.) placed in the mouth of the wise king who had tasted all that life can offer by one of the latest writers of the Old Testament. In the apocryphal book of Wisdom, again, the composi- tion of an Egyptian Hellenist, who from internal evidence is judged to have lived somewhat earlier than Philo, Solomon is introduced uttering words of admonition, imbued with the spirit of Greek philosophers, to heathen sovereigns. The so-called Psalter of Solomon, on the other hand, a collection of Pharisee psalms written in Hebrew soon after the taking of Jerusalem by Pompey, and preserved to us only in a Greek version, has nothing to do with Solomon or the traditional conception of his person, and seems to owe its name to a transcriber who thus distinguished these newer pieces from the older "Psalms of David."' In New Testament times Solomon was the current type alike of magnificence and of wisdom (Matt. vi. 29 ; Luke xi. 31). But Jewish legend was not content with this, and, starting from a false interpretation of Eccles. ii. 8, gave him sovereignty over demons, to which were added (by a perversion of 1 Kings iv. 33) lordship over all beasts and birds, and the power of understanding their speech. These fables passed to the Arabs before the time of Mohammed (NAbiglia, i. 22), found a place in the Koran, and gave Solomon (Suleiman) a lasting fame throughout the Moslem East. The story of Solomon, the hoopoe, and the queen of Sheba in sur. xxvii. of the Koran closely follows the second Targum to Esther i. 2, where the Jewish fables about him may be read at large. Solomon was supposed to owe his sovereignty over .demons to the possession of a seal on which the "most great name of God" was engraved. See Lane, Arabian _Nights, introd., note 21, and chap. i. note 15.