The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)

"But Cambyses came from Memphis to Sais, and when he entered the palace of Amasis, he gave orders to take his body out of the grave; when this was done he caused the corpse to be scourged, the hair to be torn out; he stabbed it and treated it with every kind of indignity. When those who were executing his commands grew weary, for the body being embalmed resisted their blows, and did not come to pieces, he ordered it to be burned. This was a sacrilegious command. The Persians regard fire as a deity, and the burning of the dead is not according to the laws either of the Persians or the Egyptians. The Persians do not consider it right to offer a corpse to a god; the Egyptians regard fire as a living all-consuming animal, and as it is by no means lawful to give up corpses to animals, they embalm them that they may not be consumed by worms. Hence Cambyses had commanded what was not allowed by the law of either nation. But the Egyptians say that it was not Amasis who endured this contumely, but another Egyptian of the same age, whom the Persians outraged under the impression that they were outraging Amasis. Amasis had been informed by an oracle what would happen to him after death; to escape his fate he had buried a man, who died at the time, in the tomb which he had made for himself at the temple of Neith at Sais, near the door, and had commanded his son to bury him in the innermost grave-chamber. In my opinion these arrangements of Amasis about his burial were not carried out, they were mere inventions of the Egyptians."

Ctesias' narrative is as follows: Cambyses fulfilled the last commands of his father that his younger brother Tanyoxarkes should be made lord of the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Parthians, and Carmanians, and in every other respect, and sent his corpse to Persia for burial. Having ascertained that the Egyptian women were more desirable than others, he asked Amasis for one of his daughters, and Amasis sent Nitetis the daughter of Hophra. Cambyses took great delight in her, and loved her much, and when he had learned all her story he acceded to her request that he would avenge the murder of her father. When he had armed against Egypt and Amyrtaeus, the Egyptian king, the eunuch Combaphes, who had great influence with Amyrtaeus, betrayed the passes into Egypt, and all the affairs of the country, in order that he might be viceroy of it. Then Cambyses set out on his march; in the battle 50,000 Egyptians and 20,000 Persians were slain,[143 - Bekker reads 7000.] Amyrtaeus was taken alive, and all Egypt was subjugated. Cambyses did no further harm to Amyrtaeus beyond sending him with 6000 Egyptians of his own choice to Susa; but Combaphes became governor of Egypt as Cambyses had promised first by Izabates, his most trusted eunuch and the cousin of Combaphes, and then by his own mouth.[144 - Ctesias, "Pers." 9; Athenaeus, p. 560.]

Herodotus' account is once more dominated by the desire to give prominence to the vengeance for the crime which Amasis committed in betraying Hophra his master and thrusting from the throne the legitimate ruler of Egypt (III. 407). Amasis was spared, but the punishment fell upon the son, who thus suffered for his father's sins. The sources open to Herodotus were the narratives of the Persians, of the Egyptians, and of his own people. The Greeks of Asia Minor had taken part in the campaign of Cambyses against Egypt; Greek mercenaries assisted in the defence; and as we have seen, Greeks were settled in Egypt in considerable numbers. Herodotus himself rejects the story that Cambyses was the son of the daughter of Hophra, as the Egyptians maintained by way of consolation; as well as another story that Cambyses had invaded Egypt in order to avenge the preference which Cyrus showed to the daughter of Hophra over his mother Cassandane. On the other hand, he adopts, though with hesitation, the story of the Persians that Cambyses sought a wife from Amasis, because it agrees with his own idea that ruin was brought upon Amasis by his own treachery and the daughter of the Pharaoh whom he had deposed. Deinon in his Persian History and Lyceas of Naucratis retained both these stories together in the form that Amasis sent Nitetis to Cyrus, and that she was the mother of Cambyses who invaded Egypt to avenge Hophra. The solicitation of Cambyses, and the deception of Amasis, in Herodotus, and in a still more pointed form in Ctesias, the source of which, Herodotus tells us, was the narrative of the Persians, has obviously arisen out of Persian poems about Cambyses, which required some poetical motive for the campaign against Egypt; we saw that the modern version of the poems concerning Cyrus represented the campaign against Tomyris as due to a similar motive. Hophra died in the year 570; when Cambyses ascended the throne, his youngest daughter must have been more than forty years of age. There was no need of any motive of this kind to excite Cambyses against Egypt, as has been shown above; after the fall of Lydia and Babylonia, Egypt was the natural aim for the Persian weapons.

Cambyses did not begin the war against Egypt immediately after his accession. Though Ctesias tells us that he first placed his brother over the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Parthians, and Carmanians, Cyrus, when he entrusted the kingdom of Babylonia to Cambyses, may have given the viceroyalty over the regions of the East to his younger son. We may confidently believe Herodotus that the death of Cyrus gave the subject nations the hope of again throwing off the yoke. After overcoming these rebellions (p. 131), in the fifth year of his reign, Cambyses marched against Egypt. Amasis, as we have observed, had made himself master of the island of Cyprus, and had entered into communication with Polycrates the prince of Samos, in order to cover an attack on Egypt by sea, and provide, in case of necessity, a counterpoise to the naval power of the Greek cities on the coast, and that of the Phenicians. Cyrus had allowed his empire to be bounded by the sea, though he did not refuse the voluntary submission of Chios and Lesbos. Cambyses went further. He wished to procure a fleet for his kingdom; Persia was to rule by sea as well as land. This, it is true, could only be done by forcing arms into the hands of subject tribes and cities, and that on an element on which the Persians could not pursue them. It was a bold conception, and in forming it Cambyses must have felt quite secure of the obedience of the Greek and Phenician cities, and of the allegiance of the old princely houses who ruled in the latter no less than of the new ones who ruled in the former. For the first time the command went forth to the harbour cities of the Syrian and Anatolian coasts, that they were to arm their ships for the king. The fleet was to support the attack of the land army, and then, passing up the Nile, facilitate the movements of the army in Egypt. The ships of the Greeks were to unite with those of the Phenicians in the harbour of Acco to the south of Carmel.[145 - Strabo, p. 758.] This resolution of Cambyses and the assembling of so magnificent a fleet on the coast of Phœnicia at once bore fruit. The princes of the Cyprian cities abandoned Egypt, recognised the supremacy of Persia, and at once prepared their ships for a voyage against Egypt. In return for this sudden and voluntary submission they were allowed to remain at the head of the cities; they were only to pay tribute and furnish contingents in war.[146 - In Herod. (3, 19) the voluntary submission of the Cyprians stands in direct connection with their participation in the campaign against Egypt; hence it cannot be placed earlier. If Xenophon ("Inst. Cyri," 1, 1) represents the Cyprians as already subjugated by Cyrus, he maintains the same of Egypt also. On the other hand, the statement of Xenophon that the Cyprians retained their native kings owing to their voluntary submission is amply confirmed by later events ("Inst. 2 Cyri." 7, 4, 2; 8, 6, 8).] On Polycrates of Samos also the naval armament of Cambyses made a most lively impression. When in possession of a strong fleet Cambyses could use it against Samos. Was Polycrates to fight for Egypt whose naval power could not defend him against this fleet, or was he to remain neutral? Polycrates held the latter course to be the worst; neutrality during the war of Cyrus and Crœsus had cost the Greek cities dear enough. He determined to change his front. When the Ionian cities launched their ships, and the vessels of Chios and Lesbos steered towards the Syrian coast, he also offered to place ships at the disposal of the Persian king for use in Egypt. Cambyses accepted the submission of Polycrates, and he sent forty well-manned ships of war.[147 - Herod. 3, 44.]

Thus Cambyses had already deprived the Pharaoh of two important points of support before he had begun the war. Whether Amasis was alive at the defection of the princes of Cyprus, and of Polycrates, is doubtful. It is possible that his death, which elevated to the throne of Egypt his son Psammenitus (Psamtek III.), an untried prince in the place of a proved and experienced leader such as Amasis, was another weight in the scale on the side of defection. There was still another difficulty to remove. The Syrian coast formed a strong wall of protection for Egypt. If the fleet followed the army along the coast it found none but difficult landing-places; at present there are none in that region for the heavier ships of our days. In any case, in a numerous army such as Cambyses no doubt led, care would have to be taken for the horses and camels. It is not true that Cambyses requested a free passage from the king of the Arabians; the men in question were the chiefs of the Arabs in the peninsula of Sinai, the Midianites and Amalekites; and it was the supply of water for the army which these tribes undertook. After completing his preparations Cambyses set out early in the year 525 B.C., in order to march through the desert before the beginning of the hottest weather, and arrive in Egypt sufficiently early before the inundation.[148 - According to Lepsius, Amasis died in January 525, and hence Memphis fell in July of this year: "Monatsberichte Berl. Akademie," 1854. The Psammenitus of Herodotus is called Psammecherites in Manetho; and Psamtik on the monuments. Rosell. "Monum. storici." 2, 153; 4, 105.]

As the desertion of Eurybatus aided Cyrus in the Lydian war (p. 20), so was Cambyses assisted in his preparations for the campaign against Egypt according to the narrative of Herodotus by the advice of Phanes, and according to Ctesias by the advice of Combaphes. We may here give unhesitating confidence to the definite assertion of Herodotus as it concerns his own countryman of Halicarnassus. The departure of Phanes for Egypt must have taken place in the autumn of the year 526 B.C., for it is Amasis who sends his trusted eunuch after him as far as Lycia. For the name of Psammenitus the fragment of Ctesias gives the incorrect name of Amyrtaeus (if this name of the later opponent of Persia on the Nile is not due to the excerpt), it substitutes Combaphes for Phanes, i. e. to all appearances the eunuch who pursues Phanes for Phanes himself. We do not find elsewhere the slightest trace that Combaphes received the vice-royalty of Egypt; on the contrary, the statements of the fragments about the cousinship of the chief eunuch of Pharaoh and the chief eunuch of Cambyses, and the repeated promise of the vice-royalty which is made to Combaphes, point to Persian poems, which had to clothe incidents of this nature in a poetical garb; we have already frequently met with the analogous promises of Arbaces to Belesys, and of Cyrus to the interpreters of dreams at Babylon.

With regard to the course of the war we can only establish the fact, that Psammenitus collected all his forces, i. e. the warrior caste, and his Ionian and Carian troops, which were apparently strengthened by Libyan tribes, and Greeks from Cyrene, and awaited the attack of the Persians at the point where at the present day the caravan road from Gaza reaches Egypt, near Pelusium, the old border fortress, surrounded by the sand of the desert and wide expanses of mud. In regard to this battle we only learn from Ctesias that 50,000 Egyptians and 20,000 Persians fell; whether it be that these numbers are taken from the Persian poems, or whether they belong to the official Persian account. A part of the Egyptian army retired to Pelusium; with another band of fugitives Psammenitus reached Memphis. When the Persians had besieged and captured Pelusium, which made a bold resistance, Egypt lay open to them. Cambyses shaped his course to Memphis. There in past days the empire of the Pharaohs had arisen; there stood the temple of Ptah, the most sacred shrine of the land, which Menes himself was said to have founded, which all his successors, including Amasis, had enlarged and adorned. Memphis closed the approach to the upper river valley, which was barred to the Persians so long as the city held out. Hence it appears to have been the determination of Psammenitus to give up the delta to the Persians, to defend Memphis, and shut himself up in its walls. The city is said to have been twenty miles in circuit (I. 85); it lay on the western bank of the Nile, and Cambyses had the difficult task of crossing the river before he could invest the city. But now it was seen how great was the support afforded by the fleet. The Egyptian ships must have been forced to retire; the union of the Persian army with the fleet was accomplished; one of these ships appeared before the walls of Memphis sooner than the army. According to the account of Herodotus it would seem that it was not the city but only the citadel of Memphis, "the white tower" on the southern dam, which defended itself. If this was the case Cambyses had no doubt to thank the fleet for it. Elsewhere the city must have been defended on the side towards the Nile by the river-dams merely, which the garrison despaired of holding against the attack of numerous ships of war. Thus invested and attacked the citadel must at length have opened the gates; and with the citadel Psammenitus fell into the hands of the Persians.[149 - Diod. "Exc. de virtute," p. 557; Polyaen. "Strateg." 7, 9. In regard to the campaign we may compare the march of Pharnabazus and Iphicrates against Nectanebos in the year 374 B.C., in Diod. 15, 41-43. Aristot. "Rhet." 2, 8, 12.] After the fall of Memphis Cambyses does not seem to have found resistance anywhere. It is nevertheless possible that Sais, the residence of Psammetichus and his descendants, as well as of Amasis and Psammenitus, the burial-place of the princes and of Amasis, attempted a defence. In any case the conquest of Sais completed the subjugation of the Egyptian land. An inscription of the Egyptians says: "When the great prince, the lord of the world, Kambathet, marched against Egypt, all nations of the earth were with him. He became lord of the whole land and settled there."[150 - Herod. 2, 181. De Rougé, "Revue Archeol," 8, 3; Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," 2, 294.] In a war of a few months Cambyses had overthrown a kingdom which reckoned by millenniums, and had been the wonder of the world.

What Herodotus tells us of the fate of Psammenitus and the death of his son reminds us in a striking manner of the legend of the Greeks about the distress and the rescue of Crœsus, who also reappears in this narrative. In both Herodotus becomes uncertain towards the end, and changes from direct to indirect narration, from assertion to supposition. When Cyrus commanded Crœsus to be burned, he intended, according to Herodotus, to prove whether a god would come to his aid; Cambyses intends to put the endurance of Psammenitus to the test. Two trials are made with this object; and a third trial also takes place; and if Crœsus calls on Solon three times on the pyre, Psammenitus remains dumb "with horror," as Aristotle says, at the sight of his daughter at her slavish task, and of his son when led out to execution; it is only at the sight of his friend who has become a beggar that he breaks forth into lamentation. Like Cyrus at Sardis, Cambyses at Memphis inquires into the reason of such conduct. But if Cyrus weeps at the pyre, and desires to save Crœsus, who is finally rescued by a god, so in this place, all the Persians who are present weep, and Crœsus weeps, and Cambyses himself is touched by compassion; he wishes to save the son of Psammenitus; and though he cannot do this he releases the father out of captivity and receives him at his court. There is a difference in the stories in the fact that though Cambyses is putting Psammenitus to the test, the son is actually executed, and that the compassion of Cambyses is not aroused by the danger impending over the Egyptian king, but by his conduct. As in the story of Crœsus and Cyrus, so in this, we have obviously a legend of the Greeks – the Greeks in Egypt. The first story has arisen out of the intention of Crœsus not to survive the fall of his kingdom, to offer himself as a sacrifice to the angry god of the Lydians; and the second has no other foundation than the punishment exacted by Cambyses in accordance with the sentence of the seven judges (p. 105), for the murder of his herald who had demanded the surrender of Memphis, and for the massacre of the crew of the ship in which the herald had gone to the city. If the seven judges demand ten Egyptians for every man slain, this sentence, though it fell on the most distinguished families of Egypt, would seem mild enough according to the scale of oriental punishments; as 2000 men were brought out for execution, the ship must have had the usual crew of a Greek trireme. Whether the son of Psammenitus was really put to death for the herald, we must leave to the legend; Ctesias tells us only of the deportation of Psammenitus and 6000 Egyptians to Susa.

Cambyses resolved to treat Psammenitus and Egypt in precisely the same way as Cyrus had treated Crœsus and Lydia, Nabonetus and Babylon. It is not said that any harm was done to the city of Memphis, and Herodotus tells us himself that if Psammenitus had known how to keep quiet, Cambyses would have entrusted him with the governorship of Egypt. Yet the degradation of his daughter and the execution of his son were a strange initiation of such treatment.[151 - Aristot. "Rhet." 2, 8, 12.] Still more incredible is the ill-treatment and burning of the corpse of Amasis, for which Cambyses had not the slightest reason, especially as Herodotus states that Cambyses sent Ladice, the widow of Amasis, unharmed back to her own city of Cyrene.[152 - Herod. 2, 181.] The story belongs to the context of the narrative according to which Cambyses sues for the daughter of Amasis, and is deceived by him with the daughter of Hophra, whose desire for vengeance on Amasis he satisfies. As Amasis is no longer alive, vengeance comes upon his son and grandson, and even on his own body. For this reason Herodotus has adopted this story, for he lays great stress on the fact that no misfortune befell Amasis in his life, though he rejects the Egyptian version that Amasis had taken the precaution to substitute the corpse of another person of the same age for his own. If Sais resisted and was taken by storm, the temple of Neith might certainly be injured, the royal sepulchres violated, and the mummies taken from them, without any blame attaching to Cambyses, though on a similar occasion at Memphis he is charged by Herodotus with opening the tombs and disturbing the rest of the dead.[153 - Herod. 3, 37.] The Egyptian inscription informs us that the conduct of Cambyses at Sais and in the temple of Neith, in the portico of which Amasis had built his sepulchre, was widely different from that described by the legend. He removed his soldiers from the temple, purified it, and both here and in other places he showed his regard for the worship of the Egyptians as Cyrus had shown it for the worship of the Babylonians and the Hebrews. From the account of Herodotus, no less than from the later circumstances of Egypt, it is clear that no alteration was made in the government, law, and administration of justice, except that a Persian satrap was placed at the head of the country and Persian garrisons were sent to the citadels of the most important places. Even the Egyptian warrior caste remained unchanged and undiminished; it merely passed from the service of the Pharaohs into that of the Achæmenids; and after repeated rebellions numbered more than 400,000 men in the middle of the fifth century B.C.

CHAPTER XI

THE MARCH TO MEROE

More than two centuries before Cambyses set foot upon its soil, Egypt had experienced the rule of the stranger. The reign of the Ethiopic monarchs of Napata over Egypt (730-672 B.C.) was followed by the more severe dominion of the Assyrians. But Psammetichus had been able to restore the kingdom, and the sovereignty of his house; the reign of Amasis had called into existence a beautiful after-bloom of Egyptian art, had given a lively impulse to trade, and increased the welfare of the land. Now the day of Pelusium and the fall of Memphis had decided the fate of Egypt irrevocably and for all time. The kingdom had been founded from Memphis three thousand years previously, and at Memphis it was now overthrown. Egypt, in spite of repeated and stubborn attempts, was never able to recover from the dominion of the Persians, and even the fall of the Persian empire did not permit the rise of the Egypt of the Egyptians.

The speedy and great success which Cambyses achieved had effects beyond the borders of Egypt. Herodotus narrates that the Libyans in their anxiety about the fortune of Egypt submitted to Cambyses without a battle, promised to pay tribute, and sent presents. The Cyrenaeans also and Barcaeans from similar apprehensions had done the same. The presents of the Libyans were graciously accepted by Cambyses, but the 500 minae which the Cyrenaeans sent, he threw with his own hand among the people because "it was too little."[154 - Herod. 3, 13.] Diodorus explains the anxiety of the Libyans and Cyrenaeans, "after Cambyses had become lord of the whole of Egypt" and the voluntary submission which was the consequence of it, by the fact that the Libyans and Cyrenaeans had fought against Cambyses with the Egyptians. We know from other sources that the princes of Cyrene were in close and friendly connection with Amasis.[155 - Diod. "Exc. de legat." p. 619 = 10, 14.] The subjugation of the Libyans cannot have extended farther than to the tribes adjacent to the Delta, and reaching towards the west perhaps as far as Cyrene. At that time Archelaus III. was the king of Cyrene. More than a century before, Greeks from the island of Thera had founded the city on the well-watered and grassy slopes which run from the table-land of Barca to the sea. Ever since that time the family of Battus and Archelaus had reigned over this settlement, which, owing to its favoured position and lively trade, rose quickly to power and wealth. The attack which Pharaoh-Hophra made upon it in the year 571 B.C. had been successfully repulsed by the Cyrenaeans (III. 405). Subsequently, about the year 545 B.C., Battus III. had been compelled to submit to a constitutional form of government which restricted the monarchy to a hereditary presidentship. Discontented with this position, Archelaus III. attempted to recover the old powers. The attempt failed, Archelaus fled, and found shelter with Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos. When he had collected there an army of adventurers he returned at their head, subverted the constitution, and set on foot a cruel persecution against all who had adhered to it. He may have felt the ground insecure under his feet in the city; the fall of Egypt deprived him of the support which he had had in that country, and if he had really sent a contingent to aid Psammenitus he had to fear the vengeance of Cambyses. These were reasons enough for seeking the protection of the Persian king. He recognised the sovereignty of Cambyses, and sent that sum of money as the first proof of his submission.

"Cambyses now proposed to himself a threefold expedition," so Herodotus relates; "one against the Carthaginians, a second against the Ammonians, and a third against the long-lived Ethiopians, who inhabit Libya on the southern sea. It seemed best to send the fleet against the Carthaginians, and a part of the land army against the Ammonians, but to the Ethiopians envoys were first sent. When he had given this command he ordered fish-eaters to be brought from Elephantine (the island on the Nile on the border of Egypt) who were acquainted with the language of the Ethiopians. While these were being brought he ordered the fleet to set out against Carthage. But the Phenicians refused; they were bound by great oaths, and they would be guilty of a crime if they went against their own children. As the Phenicians refused, the rest (i. e. the Greeks) were not strong enough, and so the Carthaginians escaped slavery under the Persians. For Cambyses could not do violence to the Phenicians, because they had voluntarily submitted to the Persians (p. 90), and the whole naval power rested on the Phenicians. When the fish-eaters had come, they were told what they had to say to the Ethiopians, and received the presents which they had to take – a purple robe, a golden necklace and bracelets, a box of alabaster filled with ointment, and a jar of palm-wine. The Ethiopians to whom they were sent were said to be the tallest and most beautiful of men, and as they live under laws which are different from those of other men, they were said to regard the man who is the tallest and strongest among them as the most worthy of the throne."

"When the fish-eaters reached the Ethiopians and gave over their presents to the king, they said: 'Cambyses, the king of the Persians, wishes to be your friend and sends you as presents these things in which he takes most delight himself.' The Ethiopians answered: 'The Persian king has not sent you with these presents because he wishes to be my friend, and ye are not speaking the truth. You have been sent to spy out my kingdom, and he is not a righteous man. If he were righteous he would not have desired another land than his own, nor would he have reduced men to slavery from whom he had suffered no wrong. Give him this bow (the bows of the Ethiopians were of palm-wood and more than four cubits in length),[156 - Herod. 7, 69. Cf. Strabo, p. 802.] and say to the king of the Persians, that when his people can string a bow of that size he may march against the long-lived Ethiopians with an overwhelming army; till then, he may thank the gods that it has not occurred to the sons of the Ethiopians to conquer another land in addition to their own.' Then he gave them the bow, and he took the purple robe, and asked what it was and how it was made. And when the fish-eaters gave him a true account of the purple and the dyeing, he said that the men were deceivers and their garments deceptive. When he saw the necklace and bracelets, the king laughed, for he imagined that they were fetters; their fetters, he said, were stronger. Then he inquired about the ointment, and when the preparation and use of this were explained, he said the same as about the robes. The wine he drank and it pleased him greatly, and he asked what the king of Persia ate, and what was the greatest age to which the Persians lived. They replied that he ate bread, and explained the nature of wheat; they also put the greatest age to which the Persians lived at eighty years. The king replied that he did not wonder that their years were few, inasmuch as they ate dirt, and they would not live so long as they did, if the drink did not strengthen them – in that matter the Persians had the advantage. Of the Ethiopians most lived to 120 years, and some even longer; their food was cooked flesh, and their drink milk. When the envoys returned and Cambyses received their account, he fell into a passion, and marched against the Ethiopians without taking measures for the supply of provisions or considering that he was about to march to the end of the world, but like one distraught and out of his mind, he set forth on his expedition as soon as he heard the account of the fish-eaters. No Persian was able to draw the bow of the Ethiopians; Smerdis alone, the brother of Cambyses, was able to draw it two finger-breadths.[157 - Herod. 3, 30.] Cambyses bade the Greeks who were with him (i. e. the crews of the Greek ships) to remain in Egypt; but the whole of the rest of the army he took with him. When he came to Thebes, he sent 50,000 men away with orders to enslave the Ammonians and burn the oracle of Zeus; with the rest he marched against the Ethiopians. But before the army had traversed a fifth part of the way all their provisions were consumed, and not long after even the beasts of burden were eaten. If Cambyses when he saw this had given up his intention, and led the army back, he would have shown himself a wise man after his first mistake, but he went recklessly onward. So long as the soldiers found anything growing on the ground, they ate herbs and grass; but when they came to the sand, some of them did a horrid deed; they drew lots for the tenth man and ate him. When Cambyses heard of this, he was distressed that the soldiers should eat each other, abandoned the war against the Ethiopians, marched back, and reached Thebes after losing many men. This was the end of the expedition against the Ethiopians. But with regard to those who were sent against the Ammonians it is only known that they reached the city of Oasis where the Samians dwell, seven days' march distant from Thebes through the desert; in the Greek language this place is called the island of the blessed. To this place the army came; but beyond this no man knows anything except what the Ammonians say. They relate that when they marched from the oasis through the sand and were about midway between the oasis and the Ammonians, and were eating breakfast, a great wind from the south blew up a mass of sand and overwhelmed them, and in this way they perished." Diodorus represents Cambyses as making the attempt to subjugate the Ethiopians with a great host, in which he lost the whole of his army and was in the greatest danger.[158 - Herod. 3, 17-26; Diod. 3, 1.]

If the legend of the Greeks of the fortunes of Psammenitus after his defeat exhibits analogous traits to the legend, also Greek, of the fate of Crœsus after his capture, the account given by Herodotus of the march of Cambyses against the long-lived Ethiopians reminds us of his account of the march of Cyrus against the Massagetæ. In both cases the aim is directed against unknown foreign nations, against whom there is no reason to make war; in both cases good sense, moderation, wisdom, and love of peace are found in the chief of the barbarians; in both envoys are sent under false pretences; in both the conversation on either side is accurately known. In the first case it is a foolish resolution which brings ruin; in the second it is the vexation of Cambyses at the answer of the Ethiopians, and the inability to draw the bow, which causes him to lead his army without any hesitation into destruction. Along with other indications, the test of the bow here, like the bottle in the other legend, points to a poetical source.

We have seen that the ancient Pharaohs, the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, Tuthmosis and Amenophis, and after them Sethos and Ramses II., had extended the dominion of Egypt up the Nile to Semne and Cumne, and subsequently to Mount Barkal. The Egyptian language, worship, and art spread in this direction, and with the decline of the Egyptian power after the time of the Ramessids (from the year 1100 B.C.), an independent state grew up, the metropolis of which was Napata, near the modern Meravi, on Mount Barkal. The princes of this state in their turn, from king Pianchi onwards, had forced their way down the Nile.[159 - Vol. III. 63 ff. 159.] Sabakon, Sebichos, and Tirhaka had governed Napata and Egypt. After Sabakon had come into conflict with the Assyrians at Raphia in Syria (720 B.C.), and Tirhaka at Altaku (701 B.C.), Tirhaka succumbed in the year 672 B.C. to the arms of Esarhaddon. Repeated attempts of Tirhaka and his son Urdamane upon Egypt were wrecked; Esarhaddon calls himself king of Miluhhi and Cush. Assurbanipal boasts that he pursued Urdamane as far as the land of Cush. But the kingdom of Napata, which the inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal call Miluhhi (Meroe[160 - The name Miluhhi is nevertheless used so often in the inscription of the kings, and in such close connection with Egypt, that the kingdom of Napata may merely be meant. Assurbanipal tells us that his brother seduced into rebellion "the princes of Miluhhi whom he subjugated." Vol. III. 170.]) – in the inscriptions on Mount Barkal we find the names Meru and Merua – continued to exist, and maintained itself against the restoration of Egyptian power under Psammetichus and his successors. We cannot doubt that Cambyses wished to penetrate up the Nile at least as far as the army of the Assyrians, that he felt it necessary to secure his dominion in Egypt against attacks from Napata, and to extend his dominion as far up the Nile as the army of the old Pharaohs had reached. That the prince, who, as we saw, made the most careful preparations for the campaign against Egypt, should have thrown himself foolishly and recklessly into this undertaking, as Herodotus represents, is incredible, and the statement must be attributed to special tendencies in the sources used by the historian. So far as Meroe, Herodotus tells us from information collected at Elephantine on the southern border of Egypt, the way lay up and on the Nile. First there were four days' journey from Elephantine (against the stream), then forty days' march along the river, since the rocks made navigation impossible, and then after twelve days' voyage the great city of Meroe was reached, the metropolis of the rest of the Ethiopians. The distance to the place where the Egyptians lived who had emigrated under Psammetichus (III. 307) was not less than the distance from Elephantine to Meroe, and it was a long journey for them to the long-lived Ethiopians. The total of 56 days' journey from the way from Elephantine to Meroe upon or along the Nile points to a place much higher up the river than Napata. The new Meroe is meant, which the princes of Napata, receding before the Persians, had founded before the time of Herodotus.[161 - Herod. 2, 29; Strabo, p. 786. Herodotus' statements, like those of the later authorities from Eratosthenes to Strabo and Pliny, have the second, more southern, Meroe in view, the ruins of which were found at Begerauieh, above the mouth of the Atbara, some 150 miles as the crow flies to the south of Napata. They describe this Meroe as situated on an island, because the Atbara was regarded as an arm of the Nile. The ruins at Begerauieh are less important and artistic than those of Napata, the hieroglyphics are of another kind. As the Persians maintained their hold on Napata, a new metropolis of the Ethiopian kingdom obviously grew up at this place after the times of Cambyses and Darius, which adopted the name and civilization of the old.] Herodotus' statements that the Ethiopians worshipped Zeus and Dionysus alone among the gods, and worshipped them very zealously, that there was an oracle of Zeus in their country, and that it was only by its command that they went to war, are completely established by the monuments of Napata. They show that the worship of Ammon, the god of Thebes and upper Egypt, and that of Osiris whom the Greeks, as we know, compared with their Dionysus, were zealously prosecuted. From inscriptions and intelligence of other kinds we have also ample information of the influence of the priests, and the importance of the oracle in the kingdom of Napata. The fame of the priesthood at Napata may be the basis of the "pious Ethiopians" of Homer; the same piety, though further removed, is shown in Herodotus' narrative of the long-lived Ethiopians.

When Cambyses, so Strabo tells us, had made himself master of Egypt, he advanced to Meroe (Napata), and it is said that he gave the name to the city in honour of his wife, or his sister, as others say, who was buried there. Diodorus indeed tells us that Cambyses founded the famous city of Meroe, and gave it the name of Meroe after his mother.[162 - Strabo, p. 790; Diod. 1, 33.] Josephus also observes that Cambyses changed the name of the royal city of the Ethiopians and called it Meroe.[163 - "Antiq." 2, 10.] However unfounded may be the assertion that the name of Meroe proceeded from Cambyses – for we find it used two centuries previously by the Assyrians – it is quite clear from these statements that Cambyses did advance as far as the old metropolis of the Ethiopians and brought it into his power; that he conquered and maintained the kingdom of Napata. Indeed Herodotus tells us elsewhere himself that he advanced far beyond Napata to the south. "In his campaign against the long-lived Ethiopians," we are told in this passage, "Cambyses subjugated the Ethiopians who dwell around the sacred Nysa, and hold festivals in honour of Dionysus." The position of the mythical Nysa, we cannot, it is true, define more precisely than that a Homeric hymn puts it above the fountains of the Nile,[164 - "Hymn." 26, 9.] and Herodotus himself places it above Egypt in Ethiopia;[165 - "Hymn." 2, 146.] but inasmuch as these Ethiopians of Nysa wore leopard and lion skins, according to Herodotus, and were armed with clubs; as their arrow-heads were made of sharp stones, and their lances of the horns of antelopes; as they painted themselves half red and half white in battle;[166 - "Hymn." 7, 69.] as they had to pay to the Persians every third year two hundred logs of ebony, twenty large tusks of elephants, five boys, and two chœnixes of unrefined gold,[167 - "Hymn." 3, 97.] Cambyses must have penetrated into the land of the negroes, the zone of ebony and the elephant. On the middle course of the Nile in Nubia, and above Napata, there were tribes akin to the Egyptians; the land of the negroes began about the union of the White and Blue Nile. The monuments of Egypt comprise both populations under the name Cush, the name of the land of the south, and they exhibit these southern nations as partly red and partly black. The Greeks call the red and black inhabitants of the land of the south, Ethiopians. According to the statements of Artemidorus of Ephesus and of Agatharchides, which have been preserved by Strabo and Diodorus, the land of the elephant-hunters and ostrich-eaters, who fought with the Ethiopians, men armed with the horns of the antelope, began south of the confluence of the Atbara and Bahr-el-Azrek or Blue River, and the Nile.[168 - Diod. 3, 26, 33; Strabo, p. 772.] At the present time the region of the ebony-woods and elephants begins in the marsh at the foot of the Abyssinian Alps; elephants are not found elsewhere except in some more northern regions on the Red Sea; and that the Ethiopians did not acquire the elephants' tusks in the way of trade is proved by the small amount of gold which they had to pay as tribute. As we find in the reliefs of Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustem, among the nations of the Persian kingdom, certain figures which are marked out as negroes by their short, curly hair, their snub nose, their bare breast and the animal's skin on the shoulders; as the Ethiopians of Nysa and their neighbours served, according to Herodotus, in the army of Xerxes, and paid the tribute mentioned, as Herodotus expressly tells us, even in his day, the march of Cambyses must have penetrated beyond the mouth of the Atbara, and Napata must have been permanently maintained, otherwise such distant tribes would not have furnished contingents in war fifty years later, and their tribute would have come to an end long before Herodotus.

Hence Cambyses did not, as the account of Herodotus represents, return to Egypt from the upper Nile without success. On the contrary, he penetrated much further than the Assyrians, and his campaign had more lasting results than the conquests of Tuthmosis III. and Ramses II. on the upper Nile. The account given by Herodotus of the distress into which the army fell, the statement that the soldiers ate each other (which is also told of the expedition of Cyrus to the Indus), and that the retreat to Egypt was thus brought about, is hardly compatible with such results and so firmly-established a supremacy. Yet we may suppose that Cambyses wished to penetrate even further than the junction of the White and Blue Nile, and there fell into difficulties. But it is probable that quite another incident lies at the base of the legend of the distress of Cambyses "in the sand." At Premnis on the Nile, Pliny mentions "the market of Cambyses;" in Ptolemy the same place is called "the Magazine of Cambyses." Strabo, when narrating the campaign which Petronius took in the year 24 B.C. against Napata, tells us, that after Petronius had taken Pselchis (140 miles above Elephantine) he came to Premnis (150 miles further up the Nile, below Abu Simbel and the falls of Wadi Halfa), "after he had marched through the sand-heaps in which the army of Cambyses was buried by a sudden wind." Thus, five hundred years after the campaign of Cambyses, the tradition was in existence, that his army had been buried there. Hence when Napata had been conquered, and the negro stems subjugated, when Mount Barkal and the falls of Wadi Halfa were already behind the army on the return journey, it was overtaken by a sand-storm in the neighbourhood of Egypt, and a part of the army, though not the whole, was buried.[169 - Plin. "H. N." 6, 35; Strabo, p. 822.]

Herodotus told us above that Cambyses in his march against the Ethiopians sent a section of his army against the Ammonians, to reduce them to slavery, and burn the oracle of Ammon there. Diodorus repeats the statement of Herodotus almost in the same words. Justin observes, that Cambyses had sent an army for the conquest of the famous temple of Ammon, but it was overwhelmed by a storm and masses of sand. Herodotus' narrative of this campaign cannot have arisen from the source from which he took the striking traits of his account of the march against the long-lived Ethiopians. Had this treated of the march against the Ammonians it would have given some account of the issue of it; but Herodotus expressly tells us that only the Ammonians could give an account of this. His authority therefore was a Greek-Egyptian tradition. The Ammonians inhabited the oasis of Sivah, which lies in the desert to the west of Egypt: the worship of Ammon was carried there by Egyptian settlers and Egyptian influence.[170 - Herod. 2, 42.] We cannot doubt that Cambyses, after Cyrene and the tribes of the Libyans between Egypt and Cyrene had submitted, sent a part of his army to obtain possession of this oasis. The oasis of Ammon was well adapted to keep the Libyans of the coast as well as the Cyrenaeans in subjection; and was at the same time an important station for trade, and a desirable point of support for further undertakings in the West. The command to enslave the inhabitants of the oasis and burn the temple, is part of the conception which represents Cambyses as setting out against the Ethiopians in a moment of reckless passion. According to Herodotus, the expedition to Sivah came in seven days after leaving Thebes to "the Island of the Blest," i. e. to the oasis El Charigeh, which as a fact is seven good days' march from Thebes in the desert.[171 - Parthey, "Die Oase des Jupiter Ammon, Abh. Berl. Akad." 1862, s. 159 ff.] From this point the army had to proceed about 500 miles; at present the caravans go northward from El Charigeh, then to the west from the oasis of Kasr, to Sivah. What happened to the army on one of these routes, no one, Herodotus says, can tell; the Ammonians declared that it was buried half way between El Charigeh and Sivah.

It would be rash to connect the heaps of bones which a traveller in our times saw in the neighbourhood of the oasis of Kasr with the destruction of the army of Cambyses,[172 - Belzoni, "Narrative," p. 398.] and it is surprising that the Persians took the longer route from Thebes, when the shorter route which led from Memphis to Sivah was already frequented. Alexander of Macedon, in order to reach the Ammonians, marched from the Mareotic Lake along the coast westward to Paraetonium, then he turned directly to the south, and in eight marches reached the oasis. A modern traveller reached it in fifteen days from Fayum, in 1809, and the troops of Mahomet Ali who subjugated Sivah in 1820 to Egypt (2000 men and 500 camels with water) reached it in fourteen days. Most remarkable of all is the fact, that both campaigns of Cambyses were overtaken by the same disaster. The direction taken by each does not allow us to connect the two; the route to Sivah could not be past Pselchis and Premnis. Yet neither one nor the other disaster is in itself incredible, though 50,000 men cannot have perished. Some 70 years ago a caravan of about 2000 souls was buried in a sand-storm on the road from Darfur to Egypt.[173 - Ritter, "Erdkunde," 2, 1, 397.] But even if the division which was despatched against the oasis of Ammon succumbed to the storms of the desert, Cambyses maintained the oasis El Charigeh, which Herodotus calls the city Oasis and the Island of the Blessed. The magnificent remains of a temple which Darius the son of Hystaspes caused to be erected there to the god of the oasis, the ram-headed Ammon, prove that the oasis was conquered and held by Cambyses.[174 - Lepsius, "Trinuthis, Z. Aegypt. Sprache," 1874, s. 76 ff.]

Like the undertaking against the Ammonians, the intention of Cambyses to send the fleet against Carthage was evidence of his plan of extending his power to the west, and achieving in Africa what his father had done in Asia. Herodotus gives the account of the order commanding the fleet to sail, of the refusal of the Phenicians, and the abandonment of the project by Cambyses, according to the tradition of the Greeks, who together with the Phenicians made up the fleet of Cambyses and the Greeks in Egypt. There is no reason to doubt the statement. By the submission of the Cyrenaeans and Barcaeans Cambyses became the neighbour of Carthage, which had lately united the Phenician colonies of West Africa under her leadership and was eager to oppose the advance of the Greeks in the west of the Mediterranean, the settlement of their colonies to the west of the great Syrtis, and their progress in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. If the attempt to advance to the desert to the west of El Charigeh were already wrecked, if Cambyses had already returned from Napata when he commanded the fleet to sail against Carthage, new successes covered that disaster as well as the calamity of Premnis, and the gain of Carthage was of more importance than that of the oasis of Sivah. The old Phenicians of the East, in union with the navy of the Anatolian cities, was to conquer the new Phœnicia of the West. The Greeks no doubt were ready, but the Phenicians refused. By injuring their colonies in the West they would have rendered the greatest service to the rival naval power and trade of the Greeks; in Anatolia and on the coasts of Sicily they would probably have given a fatal blow to their own power by sea. Whether Cambyses saw this connection of affairs, and felt that the subjection of Carthage would liberate the independent Greeks from a dangerous neighbour, and the dependent Greeks from a rival in trade, or whether he simply gave way to the refusal of the Phenicians, we cannot decide: we only know that "as the fleet of the Phenicians refused," – and it formed the preponderating part of the naval force, – it was impossible to compel it to go.

CHAPTER XII

THE DEATH OF CAMBYSES

"When Cambyses returned from Thebes to Memphis," so Herodotus narrates, "Apis appeared to the Egyptians. They put on their best clothes, and made holiday. Cambyses seeing this, formed the opinion that they held the festival because misfortune had happened to him. He summoned the governors of Memphis, and when they came into his presence asked them why the Egyptians had done nothing of this kind when he had been in Memphis before, but only now that he had lost the greater part of his army. They replied that their god had appeared to them, who for a long time had been wont to appear, and when he appeared all the Egyptians were delighted. When Cambyses heard this he said that they lied, and punished them with death. He then sent for the priests, and when they said the same, he said that he would soon ascertain whether a tame deity had appeared to the Egyptians, and commanded them to bring out Apis. Apis was brought out, and Cambyses mad as he was drew his sword. He meant to stab Apis in the belly, but he hit the thigh and said with a laugh to the priests: 'Wretches, are these creatures gods, which have flesh and blood, and feel iron? Such a god is worthy of the Egyptians. But you shall not mock me for nothing,' He gave command to scourge the priests and slay every Egyptian who was found making holiday. In this way the festival came to an end; the priests were punished, the Apis died in the temple of the wound in his thigh, and the priests buried him secretly unknown to Cambyses.[175 - Herod. 3, 27-30.] But the king remained in Memphis and raged against the Egyptians, the allies, and the Persians. He caused the old sepulchres to be opened and looked at the corpses; he went into the temple of Hephaestus (Ptah, I. 43), and desecrated the image of the god in various ways. He also entered the temple of the Cabiri (belonging to the Phenicians at Memphis, III. 310), which none but the priests may enter, and outraged the images and burned them."[176 - Herod. 3, 37.] Diodorus observes that Cambyses, as was said, took away the Golden Zone in the Ramesseum, which measured 365 cubits, one for each day in the year, and was a cubit thick.[177 - Vol. I. 175. Diod. 1, 49.] Justin tells us quite generally that Cambyses, enraged at the superstition of the Egyptians, gave orders for the destruction of the temples of Apis and the other gods.[178 - Justin. 1, 8.]

In the narrative of Herodotus the best reason given for the wounding of Apis is the vexation of the king at the failure of his campaigns against the Ethiopians and Ammonians, and the refusal of the Phenicians; and the belief that the festival of Apis was merely an excuse for making merry over the blows which had fallen upon him. If Cambyses tells the priests, who exhibit Apis to him as a god who has recently appeared to them, that "they lied," it was very difficult for a worshipper of Auramazda to believe that a young bull was a god, and the highest god, and the "lie" with which Cambyses charges them, seems to be an accurate trait corresponding to the conceptions of the Avesta about the "lying gods," and to the Zoroastrian respect for the truth. There could hardly be a more strongly-marked contrast than between the worship of Auramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, and surrounded by the light spirits of the sky, in which no images were allowed, and the rites of the Egyptians, their worship of numerous images of the most extraordinary form in splendid temples, their adoration of the sacred animals, in which these deities appeared, and were thought to be present, – between their anxious care for the preservation of the corpse, and the eagerness of the Iranians to remove the impure remains of man. Cambyses might in all honesty believe that he was in contact with a stupid worship of idols, a senseless adoration of calves, crocodiles, and serpents, and a nation of "liars."

But if he held such opinions, he did not act on them. If he had outraged the worship of Egypt in the manner represented by the legends of the Egyptians in Herodotus and Justin, the country could hardly have remained at rest after his death, when almost all the other lands rebelled against the Persians. Egyptian inscriptions prove that under Cambyses there was no sort of religious persecution, but quite the reverse. In the tombs of the Apis, on the plateau of Memphis, on the vestibule of the new gallery which Psammetichus had caused to be hollowed out for them, when the old gallery of Ramses II. was filled, we see on a pillar Cambyses adoring the Apis. The inscription tells us: "In the year four, in the month Epiphi, in the reign of Cambyses (Kambathet), the immortal, the god was brought here for the burial which the king ordained for him. A second Apis, the successor of that which was buried, was born, as the inscription of the Apis tombs tells us, on the 28th Tybi, in the fifth year of the reign of Cambyses.[179 - The reading "year 4" in the first is confirmed by "year 5" in the second inscription. Lepsius ("Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1854, s. 224, 495) has examined the difficulties which arise regarding the time of Cambyses' campaign against Egypt, from the contradiction between these dates and the statements of the Greeks.] Inscriptions found on the statue of an Egyptian, Uzahorsun (at present in the Vatican), tell us that he had been a magistrate under Amasis and Psammenitus (Psamtik III.), and afterwards under Cambyses and Darius. 'When the great prince, the lord of the world, Kambathet,'[180 - The inscriptions also give the name Cambyses in the form Kambuza.] so we are told in these, 'marched against Egypt, all the nations of the earth were with him.' He became lord of the whole land, and settled therein. He was the great lord of Egypt, the great prince of the whole world, the king of upper and lower Egypt, Ra-mesut (i. e. Ra born again[181 - Lepsius, "Z. Aegypt. Spr." 1874, s. 76.]). And his holiness conferred on me the dignity of a counsellor and overseer of the royal gates, and commanded that I should ever be where he was. I brought a complaint before his holiness touching the people who were in the temple of Neith, that they might be driven out, that the temple might be purified and clean as before. His holiness commanded the temple to be purified, and the sacred gifts to be brought as before to Neith, the great mother of the great gods who dwell in Sais. And his holiness commanded to celebrate all the great and little festivals, as had been done before. This his holiness did because he had commanded me to announce to him the greatness of Sais, which is the city of all the gods, who are there enthroned on their seats for ever. When the king of upper and lower Egypt came to Sais, he entered himself into the temple of Neith. He visited the sacred place of her holiness the goddess, as every king had done. His holiness did this on the information which he had received of the greatness of her holiness, who is the mother of the sun himself. His holiness performed all the rites in the temple of Neith. He offered a libation of the lord of Eternity (Osiris) in the inner chamber of the temple of Neith, as all kings had done before him. On the command of his holiness, the worship of Neith, the great mother of the gods, was re-established in all its completeness for ever. I have provided the sacred worship of Neith, the lady of Sais, with all good things, as a good servant does for his master. I have re-established the priests in their office, and on the command of the king have given them rich possessions to be their own for ever. I have erected a good sepulchre for him who was without a coffin. I was a good citizen of my city. I have caused its children to live. I have set up all their houses; I have shown them every kindness as a father for his son. I have rescued their population, when disaster fell upon their canton, at a time when there was great calamity in all the land. Never did such calamity fall upon their land before."[182 - De Rougé, "Revue Archéol." 8, 37 ff.; Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypt," p. 267, 269. In the "History of Egypt," Brugsch reads Uzahorenpiris for Uzahorsun.]

This inscription, like those on the Apis tombs, proves that Cambyses in Egypt, like his father in Babylon, wished to take the place of the old princes of the land, and did take it; and that he bore the titles of the ancient Pharaohs, and that a regal-name Ra-mesut was added to his name, as was the custom with his predecessors. He undertook the protection of the ancient gods of the land; he allowed Egyptians, servants of the old king's, to come into his immediate service; he listened to their advice; heard their complaints about the outrages done to the temple, which could hardly have been avoided in the occupation (p. 147), and removed the cause; restored the priests to the enjoyment of their incomes; showed respect to their religion, and allowed it to continue without restriction. However great we suppose the care to be which the Egyptian inscriptions take to say no evil of the Persian king, whatever weight we ascribe to the fact that after the Persians had once become their masters, the priests followed the traditional custom in denoting the kings of the Persians by the titles of their Pharaohs; whatever importance we allow to the fact that the priests were closely interested in representing religious affairs as unaltered even after the change in the rulers, and however much we deduct from their formal style on the score of these considerations – it still remains an established fact, from these inscriptions, that Cambyses did not oppress the Egyptians or their religion. The purification of one of the largest and most sacred temples in Egypt, the restoration of the priesthood and the worship at the temple, could not have been ascribed to Cambyses if the opposite was known to be the case. On the other hand, the narrative of Uzahorsun presents us with the natural course of affairs. If he speaks of a great calamity such as had never before fallen on the district of Sais and the whole land, this refers to the conquest of Egypt by the Persians, since he claims the merit of having rescued the population at Sais in this calamity. We saw above, from the narrative of Herodotus, that Cambyses went to Sais, after the capture of Memphis. The inscriptions show that the priests had been driven from the temple of Neith, that the soldiers were quartered in it, that sacrifice and worship came to an end. But it also teaches us that Cambyses removed these evils. Whether he felt himself called upon to offer gifts in the temple of Neith and pour libations, or whether the priests when restored to possession of the temple property did this on his behalf, is indifferent; the inscription and Herodotus tell us that he entered the temple in person. Of the two Apis-bulls which the inscriptions mention as belonging to the reign of Cambyses, the first, which was buried in Epiphi of the fourth year of Cambyses, may have been that which the king is said to have wounded after his return from Napata. But Herodotus observes that the priests buried this Apis "secretly." This is contradicted by the sepulchral pillar, inasmuch as Cambyses causes a place to be prepared for the burial of this Apis, and we have a picture of Cambyses in adoration before this Apis. The hypothesis, which we might frame, that the priests have given themselves the satisfaction of representing Cambyses as entreating the pardon of the god whom he had slain in a holy place, little visited by the Persians, would be very artificial and insufficient to account for this glaring contradiction.

Hence we have to correct in some very essential points the Greek-Egyptian tradition of Cambyses. Though the Egyptians might attempt, as we saw, to change Cambyses into the grandson of their own Pharaoh Hophra, the people could hardly fail to attribute evil deeds and crimes to the man who had deprived their land of its independence, who had caused them painfully to feel the loss of their pride, the antiquity and the monuments of their history, their wisdom and art, a loss which they felt deeply as their repeated and stubborn rebellions show. But Herodotus would be the more ready to give credence to the narrative of the Egyptians of the wounding of Apis, because it explained the miserable death of Cambyses as the just punishment for this crime. Besides there were narratives of the Persians, which tended to impress on Cambyses the traits which he bears in Herodotus.

"Smerdis, the brother of Cambyses," so Herodotus further narrates, "was with him in Egypt. Cambyses sent him back out of jealousy, because he was able to draw the bow of the Ethiopians further than all the rest of the Persians. When Smerdis had returned to Persia, Cambyses saw in a dream a messenger from Persia, who told him, that his brother sat up on the throne and that his head touched heaven. He was afraid that his brother would slay him and take possession of the kingdom; hence he sent Prexaspes the Persian in whom he had most confidence to Persia to put him to death. Prexaspes went to Susa, and slew Smerdis as some say, while hunting with him, but according to others, by taking him out on the Red Sea (the Persian Gulf) and throwing him into the water. This was the first evil deed which Cambyses committed immediately after his crime against Apis. The second he committed against his own sister, by the same father and mother (i. e. against the youngest of the three daughters whom Cassandane bore to Cyrus; her name has not come down to us with certainty). He was seized with a passion for one of his sisters, and desired to have her to wife; but as he saw that this was unusual, for up to this time the Persians had not taken sisters to wife, he asked the royal judges (p. 105) whether there was any law which stood in the way of his wish to marry his sister. The judges made a reply which was both just and safe; they could find no law which bade the brother marry the sister, but they had found a law which allowed the king of the Persians to do as he pleased. Then Cambyses married the sister whom he loved, and after this a second younger sister. The latter followed him to Egypt. Here she witnessed, together with Cambyses, a young lion fighting against a young dog, and when the dog was being beaten, its brother broke its chain and came to its aid, and the two together got the better of the lion. Cambyses was delighted at the sight, but his sister wept. When Cambyses perceived this he asked the cause of her tears; she replied that she wept because she thought of Smerdis when she saw the brother running to help the brother, and knew that no one would come to help him (Cambyses). For this speech, the Greeks say, Cambyses put his sister to death. The Egyptian account is that at table she took a lettuce, stripped off the leaves and asked Cambyses whether it looked better when bare or when full of leaves, and when he replied that it looked better when full of leaves, she retorted: 'And yet you have made it bare by desolating the house of Cyrus.' In a rage Cambyses gave her a kick, and as she was pregnant, she miscarried and died. Such was the fury of Cambyses against his own family, and he was guilty of similar acts against the Persians. He asked those Persians who sat with him and Crœsus what sort of a man he appeared to be in comparison with his father. They replied that he was greater than his father; for he possessed all that Cyrus had possessed, and Egypt and the sea in addition. This answer did not please Crœsus, who said: 'O son of Cyrus, to me thou seemest not to be equal to thy father, for thou hast not a son to leave behind thee such as he left in thee'; and when he heard this Cambyses was pleased and praised the answer of Crœsus. He is said once to have asked Prexaspes whom he most honoured, and who carried in messages to him – his son was cup-bearer to Cambyses, an office of no slight honour – What do the Persians think and say of me? Prexaspes replied: 'O Sire, in all other things they praise thee greatly, but they say thou art too much given to wine.' Cambyses answered in displeasure: 'So the Persians now say that owing to wine I am mad and not in my right mind; their previous answer was untrue.' He remembered that they had called him greater than Cyrus, and said to Prexaspes: 'See now for yourself whether the Persians speak the truth, or whether they tell foolish tales. There is your son in the portico; if I hit him in the heart it is clear that the Persians are wrong in what they say. But if I miss they are right and I am not in my senses.' The king drew the bow, hit the youth, ordered the body to be opened and the wound to be examined. When it was found that the arrow was in the heart he laughed, and in great delight said to the father: 'Now I have proved to you, Prexaspes, that I am not mad, but that the Persians are out of their senses. Tell me now, did you ever see such an archer?' As Prexaspes saw that he was not in his right mind, and was afraid for himself, he replied: 'I believe that God himself could not shoot so well.' On another occasion he caused twelve of the leading Persians for some trifling cause to be buried alive, head downwards. Then Crœsus felt it right to warn him with words such as these: 'O king, do not yield in everything to youth and anger; restrain and bridle thyself. It is good to look beforehand, and prudence is wise. Thou slayest men of thy own nation without good reason and killest youths. If thou persistest in this, beware lest the Persians fall from thee. Thy father Cyrus charged and bade me many times to warn thee and counsel thee for good.' Cambyses answered: 'Dost thou venture to advise me, who hast governed thine own land so well, and advised my father to cross the Araxes against the Massagetæ, when they were willing to come over the river? A bad ruler of your country, you have brought yourself to destruction, and Cyrus also who followed your advice: you shall not escape me; I have long been seeking for an excuse to take you.' He seized his bow in order to shoot him, but Crœsus escaped and ran out. As he could not shoot him, he ordered his servants to seize him and put him to death. The servants, who knew his manner, hid Crœsus; if Cambyses changed his mood and asked for Crœsus they intended to bring him and receive presents, but if not, they would put him to death. Not long after Cambyses asked for Crœsus, and the servants said that he was alive. Then Cambyses said he was glad that Crœsus was alive; but those who had preserved him should not escape, but die; and this sentence he executed."

"While Cambyses was passing his time in Egypt two brothers rose up against him, two Magians, one of whom Cambyses had left behind as the overseer of his house. This man, whose name was Patizeithes, rebelled when he found that the death of Smerdis was concealed, that few Persians knew of it, and the majority believed him to be alive. Building on this, he intended to make himself master of the throne. He had a brother who was very like Smerdis and had also the same name. When he had persuaded this brother to take his advice in everything, he put him on the throne, and sent heralds in every direction, even to Egypt, to announce to the army that henceforth they should obey Smerdis the son of Cyrus, and not Cambyses. The envoy to Egypt found Cambyses and the army at Ecbatana in Syria; he came forward and proclaimed his message. When Cambyses heard this, he thought that what was said was true, that Prexaspes had betrayed him, and when sent to kill Smerdis had not done so. He said to Prexaspes: 'Is this the way you have carried out my commands?' But Prexaspes answered: 'Sire, it is not true that thy brother has rebelled against thee, and no war will ever proceed from him. I myself, after executing your commands, buried him with my own hands. If the dead can rise then expect that Astyages the Mede will rise again; but if things continue as they have hitherto been, no evil will happen to you from Smerdis. I think that we should send for the herald and find out from him by whose order he announces to us that we are to obey Smerdis.' This advice pleased Cambyses. The herald was fetched, and Prexaspes asked him: 'You say that you come as a messenger from Smerdis, the son of Cyrus. If you tell us the truth, whether you saw Smerdis when he gave these orders, or whether you received them from one of his servants, you shall go away uninjured from this place.' The man replied: 'Since Cambyses left for Egypt I have not seen Smerdis; the Magian whom Cambyses left as overseer of his house gave me these commands; he said that Smerdis the son of Cyrus bade me make this proclamation to you.' Then Cambyses said: 'Prexaspes, you like a brave man have done what I commanded, and avoided all blame; but who of the Persians is it that has taken the name of Smerdis and revolted against me.' Prexaspes replied: 'O king, I believe that I understand what has happened; the rebels are the Magians, Patizeithes, the overseer of the palace, and his brother Smerdis.' Then Cambyses was struck with the truth of the speech, and the fulfilment of the dream, and when he found that he had killed his brother for no result, he wept and bewailed his misfortune, and determined to lead his army with all haste against Susa and the Magians. But as he was mounting his horse, the button fell from the end of the sheath of his sword, and the naked point entered his thigh in the same place in which he had once stabbed Apis. As he believed that the wound was mortal, he asked for the name of the city. He was told that it was Ecbatana. It had been previously announced to him at Buto that he would die at Ecbatana; and he believed that he would end his days as an old man at Ecbatana in Media. But when he heard the name he was brought to his senses by the terror of the calamity which threatened him from the Magians, and by the wound, and said, with clear understanding of the oracle, that it was fated for the son of Cyrus to die there. After some twenty days he caused the most distinguished of the Persians who were with him to be summoned, and said: 'Persians, I am brought to such a state that I must reveal to you what I have most carefully concealed. When I was in Egypt I saw in my sleep a dream, – would that I had never seen it. It seemed to me that a messenger came from home, who announced that my brother sat on the royal throne and touched heaven with his head. Then I was afraid that my brother was taking the throne from me, and I acted more rashly than wisely, – it is not permitted to human nature to avoid the coming future. I sent, fool that I was, Prexaspes to Susa to slay Smerdis. After the crime, I felt myself secure; I never believed that another would rise up against me after the death of Smerdis. Wholly in error concerning that which was to come, I have murdered my brother without sufficient cause, and am nevertheless deprived of the sovereignty. It was the rebellion of the Magian Smerdis which the demon revealed to me in a dream. This deed I have done: be ye assured that Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, is no longer alive. The Magian whom I left behind as overseer of the palace and his brother Smerdis have obtained possession of the throne. He who before all others would have averted this disgrace from me, is no more; he has met his death by wicked murder at the hands of his nearest relation. As he is no more, and I am dying, Persians, I must tell you what to do after my death. And so I charge you, calling on the royal gods, all of you, but chiefly the Achæmenids, who are here present, not to allow the dominion to pass over to the Medes. If they obtain it by craft, take it from them by craft; if they maintain it by force, take it away by yet stronger force. If ye do this, the earth will bring forth fruit for you, and your wives will bear children, and your flocks will increase, and ye will be free men for all time. But if ye do not acquire the sovereignty again or attempt to recover it, I pray the gods that the opposite may happen to you all, and that every Persian may come to such an end as mine.' When Cambyses had thus spoken he lamented all the deeds that he had done, and the Persians rent their garments and lamented and cried aloud. When the bone had gangrened and the thigh became inflamed, Cambyses, the son of Cyrus died, after he had sat on the throne for seven years and four months, without leaving behind him son or daughter."

If in the narrative given by Herodotus of the fate of Psammenitus and the campaign of Cambyses against the Ethiopians we perceived Egyptian and Greek traditions, and along with them a poetical source, so in this account of the crimes of Cambyses and his death we have obviously Greek-Egyptian legends and echoes of Iranian poetry existing side by side. To the first we may trace the wounding of Apis, as already observed, and then the explanation of a custom which is hinted at in the Avesta, the marriage with a sister, by the decision of the judges and the example of Cambyses, the oracle of Buto, and its explanation by the Syrian Ecbatana, the reason for the wound in the thigh of Cambyses (the similar wound inflicted on Apis), and, as we shall see, the warning of Crœsus. The legends did not trouble themselves with the contradiction that, though they represent Cambyses as outraging Osiris-Apis, and Ptah, they allow him to ask advice from Egyptian gods – a proceeding which is not made more credible by the fact that Stephanus of Byzantium identifies the Syrian Ecbatana with Bataneia, and observes that the city of Hamath (Amatha) was also called Akmatha, though the invention of the oracle is thus made more intelligible.[183 - Stephen. Byz. Ἀγβάτανα Βάτανα Ἄμαθα. Cf. V. 307, and von Gutschmid, "N. Beitrage," s. 96.] Like his countrymen before him, Herodotus must have been struck by the contrast between the long reign, the achievements and successes of Cyrus, and the short reign and disastrous end of his son. The Egyptian-Greek tradition explained it by the wickedness of Cambyses, and this wickedness is the result of his attack on Apis; the frenzy of Cambyses begins immediately after this with the murder of his brother. In Herodotus the frenzy begins even earlier; the supposed maltreatment of the corpse of Amasis must belong to the period immediately after the victory over the Egyptians, i. e. to the period before the march to the South, and consequently Herodotus represents Cambyses as out of his mind when entering on this campaign, and continuing in his frenzy till he is compelled to return. The reason which he gives for this madness is that Cambyses, though Herodotus represents him in another story as full of ambitious plans from his youth, was afflicted from his birth, as it was said, with a severe disease, which some call "the sacred sickness," and that in great sickness of the body it was not strange that the mind also should be affected.[184 - Herod. 3, 3, 33.] By the sacred sickness the Greeks meant epilepsy, or spasmodic attacks in general, which were ascribed to the anger of the gods. With complete consistency Herodotus represents the madness as going on, till Cambyses is seized with anxiety concerning the rebellion of the Magian, and finds himself wounded in the thigh. With this observation he introduces the public confession and remorse – the last words of Cambyses. Other Greeks explain the crimes of Cambyses in a more natural manner. Diodorus is of opinion that he was naturally furious and changeful in his moods; the greatness of the kingdom made him yet wilder and more proud of spirit, and after the capture of Pelusium and Memphis he could not bear his prosperity as a man should.[185 - "Excerpt. de virt." p. 557 = 10, 13.] The "Laws" (of Plato) lay the blame on the education of Cambyses. In the field from his youth, surrounded by war and danger, Cyrus left the education of his sons to the royal women, and overlooked the fact that his children were not brought up and educated in the customary Persian manner. The women and eunuchs brought them up as if they needed no control, and, while yet mere children, were prosperous and perfect men. No one was allowed to contradict them; all must praise what they said or did; thus they grew up luxurious and uncontrolled; their spirits were over-full of ambition. When after such adulation and uncontrolled freedom they grew up and received the kingdom, one slew the other, enraged at his equal position, and then, maddened by drink and debauchery, lost the dominion owing to the Medes and the so-called eunuch, who despised the foolishness of Cambyses.[186 - Plato, "Legg." p. 691, 694, 695.]

It is more difficult to trace the tendencies of the poetical source which has become united with the legends in the narrative of Herodotus than to separate the legends themselves, and fix the motives which have determined the conception and judgment of the Greeks about Cambyses. From what other source could the vision of Cambyses, the shot into the heart of the cup-bearer, have come, or the conversations of Cambyses with Prexaspes, or the final words of Cambyses? If these traits are only before us as fragments at third or fourth hand, their connection with the narrative of the campaign against the long-lived Ethiopians is undeniable (the bow of the Ethiopians is the point of connection). And if we call to mind that in his last exhortations to his two sons, Cyrus calls down blessings on the son who remains well disposed to his brother, and imprecates curses on the son who is the first to do evil (p. 123), the structure of the poem becomes clear. It founds the misfortune of Cambyses on his disobedience to his father's command, and exhibits the penalty of disobedience and crime committed against a brother. Smerdis is able to draw the bow of the Ethiopian further than Cambyses and all the other Persians. This excites envy and jealousy in his brother, who sends Smerdis back to Persia. Then in a dream he sees him on the throne, and his head reaches to heaven. He sends Prexaspes to Persia, who slays the son of Cyrus in the chase and buries him with his own hand. The instrument of the murder is quickly overtaken by punishment. Had Cambyses slain Prexaspes himself intentionally or in anger, it would be conceivable; but the murder of his son is unintelligible. Only poetical justice could execute vengeance for the fact that Prexaspes had laid his hand on the son of Cyrus, by representing Cambyses as slaying with his own hand, without any personal reason whatever, the son of the man who by his own command had slain his brother, and who is best acquainted with this secret crime, the revelation of which would rouse the hearts of all the Persians against the king. As the poem goes on, it has in store even heavier penalties for the man who has slain the son of Cyrus. But it is not merely the murder of the young Prexaspes which belongs to a poetical source. The same authority represents Cambyses as becoming more and more deeply involved in guilt and crime against his house. When looking on at the two dogs which together got the better of the lion, his sister reminds him of the death of his brother. In his rage he ill-treats her and so destroys his long-cherished hope of posterity. The house of Cyrus is desolate. He has mistrusted his brother without reason – the man whom he has trusted and made the governor of his palace rebels against him; he places his brother on the throne as the younger son of Cyrus, and causes him to be proclaimed as king. In despair at such calamities, at the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the guilty cause, Cambyses ends his days. He pays the penalty of his heavy guilt by confessing and lamenting his offence before the assembly of the chief Persians. The curse of Cyrus is fulfilled. If Herodotus gives the account of the death of Cambyses after the Greek-Egyptian legend, he is obviously following Iranian poetry in the accompanying circumstances and in the speech of the dying Cambyses. We have Iranian conceptions in the answer of Prexaspes: "If the dead can rise, your brother will return"; in the saying of Cambyses to the Persians: "If ye strive earnestly to win back the dominion, the earth will bring forth fruit, and your wives will bear children, and your flocks will increase." Conceptions and ideas of this kind, expressed almost in the same words, have met us frequently in the Avesta. The close of the speech of Cambyses removes the guilt and points to the future, for he charges the Persians, and above all the Achæmenids, to risk everything that the dominion may not again pass to the Medes. If the Persians fight bravely with all the means at their disposal for the dominion, all will go well with them, if not Cambyses prays the gods that the reverse may happen to them; may every Persian die like himself by a most miserable death, i. e. by suicide, which the doctrines of Zarathrustra from their whole tenor must have most severely condemned.

No doubt the Persian epos had to explain the contrast in which the reign of Cambyses stood to that of Cyrus; no doubt it was a fact that the race of Cyrus came to an end in the male line owing to his guilt. It was due to him that his reign was followed by that of an usurper; that rebellion broke out in all quarters, the kingdom became completely disintegrated, and the establishment of Cyrus seemed ruined. The songs of the Persians gave a reason for the sudden change in the manner indicated, by the murder of the brother and its results. But they would not have charged Cambyses with madness or with any other offences than this combination required. They would not have forgotten his services to Persia; the establishment of the Persian power in the Mediterranean, the victory over Egypt, over the Ethiopians of Napata, and the negroes. It was not these poems which branded his campaign to the south as a mad undertaking, and represented it as a failure; they could not have opposed Crœsus as a wise adviser to Cambyses, or allowed Cambyses to speak of the miserable end of Cyrus in the land of the Massagetae. If these elements in the narratives of Herodotus have not come down from Greek-Egyptian tradition, if the warning of Crœsus, in the form in which we have it, was not attached by him to his account of the death of Cambyses, we should have to assume that in this case also the Persian poems came to Herodotus in their Median counterparts – a hypothesis which is excluded by the distinctly ante-Median and Persian traits in the dying speech of Cambyses.

Let us see whether information from other sources puts us in a position to establish the actual connection of affairs free from the admixture of Greek-Egyptian tradition and Persian poetry. Ctesias treated the reign of Cambyses in detail in the twelfth book of his Persian History. Of this only a meagre excerpt has come down to us, according to which the narrative began with the statement that Cambyses, in accordance with the last commands of his father, handed over Chorasmia, Bactria, Parthia, and Carmania to his brother Tanyoxarkes, as Ctesias calls him. Then follows the conquest of Egypt, as given above; and after this we are told: "There was a Magian of the name of Sphendadates who had committed some fault and been scourged by Tanyoxarkes. The Magian went to Cambyses to calumniate his brother, saying that his mind was set on evil. As a proof of defection he alleged that Tanyoxarkes would not come if he were sent for. Cambyses bade his brother come, but he refused, being occupied with other business. Then the Magian became more persistent in his calumnies. Amytis, who saw what was the Magian's object, warned her son Cambyses not to trust him. Cambyses pretended not to trust him, but in reality reposed entire confidence in him. When Cambyses bade his brother come for the third time, he obeyed. Cambyses embraced him, but was none the less determined to put him out of the way; but he was anxious to carry out his design unknown to his mother. The deed was accomplished. The Magian advises the king as follows: He was very like Tanyoxarkes, the king might give orders that his head should be cut off as having accused his brother falsely; he would then secretly slay Tanyoxarkes, and clothe him (the Magian) in his robes, so that he might be taken for him. This was done. Tanyoxarkes died by drinking bull's blood, and the Magian was clothed in his garments and called Tanyoxarkes. This was for a long time concealed from all except Artasyras the Hyrcanian and the eunuchs Bagapates and Izabates, who were most intimate with Cambyses; to them alone had Cambyses ventured to mention the matter. He caused the eunuchs of Tanyoxarkes and Labyzus, the chief of them, to be summoned, showed them the Magian thus attired, and said: Do you believe that this is Tanyoxarkes? Labyzus was astonished and said: What other man are we to think that he is? so greatly did the Magian deceive men by his likeness to Tanyoxarkes. The Magian was now sent to Bactria, and there conducted himself in all respects as Tanyoxarkes. When five years had gone by Amytis learnt what had been done from the eunuch Tibetheus, whom the Magian had caused to be beaten. She asked Cambyses to give up Sphendadates, but he refused. Then she pronounced her curse, took poison, and died. When Cambyses sacrificed, the blood of the sacrificial animals did not flow. He became dejected, and when Roxane bore him a boy without a head, he was even more out of heart, and the Magians interpreted the signs to mean that he could leave no successor. His mother appeared to him in a dream and threatened him for the murder, and this made him more dejected than ever. When he came to Babylon, by way of pastime he chipped a piece of wood with a sword, and so hit the muscle of his thigh, and died on the eleventh day after, when he had reigned eighteen years. Before his death Artasyras and Bagapates had resolved that the Magian should reign; and he reigned after the death of Cambyses."

The length of the reign of Cambyses is incorrect, as indeed almost all the numbers in Ctesias are wrong. It is also a mistake that in his account Cambyses and his brother are the sons of Cyrus and Amytis the daughter of Astyages. As we have said, they were the sons of Cyrus and Cassandane, who died before Cyrus (V. 384). The object of Ctesias was to prove the statements of Herodotus incorrect by opposing them with others. The elevation of Amytis to be the mother of the brothers, and the part which the account of Ctesias ascribes to this supposed mother, shows that Ctesias has here followed a Median version, in which the daughter of Astyages became, not the mother of Cyrus, it is true, but the mother of his successor, the ruler of Persia and Media, – the same version which, as we have already seen, assigns to Amytis the greatest influence on Cyrus, and in the present instance on his son Cambyses. Without doubt this version is derived from a poetical source; that is proved by a number of traits: the calumniation of the brother, the double introduction of the scourging, the three-fold summoning before the king, the conversation of Cambyses with the eunuch, the three-fold increase of the distress of Cambyses, the suicide and curse of Amytis, the signs at sacrifice and the abortion, the appearance of the dead, which fills up the measure and drives Cambyses to death. As in the previous case, in this form of the poems, it was the Median queen who punished Oebares, who incited Cyrus to revolt, for this act and for the death of her father, so here she visits the ruler of the Persians and Medes for his crime. Against this view of the account of Ctesias it may be urged that the Medes would take the side of the Magian more vigorously than that of Amytis, for the Magian was apparently a Mede. Herodotus, at any rate, once represents Gobryas as calling him a Mede.[187 - Herod. 3, 73.] Cambyses, it is true, does not call him so, but in his last speech merely urges the Persians not to let the empire revert to the Medes, which means no more than that the empire is not to go back to the Medes on the extinction of the house of Cyrus, when his kingdom is being broken up. We shall see that the usurper was not a Mede, and is only called a Mede by Herodotus because he wrongly thought that all the Magians were exclusively Medes (V. 194). But as the story of Ctesias obviously goes back to a poetical source, we are not carried any further by it in establishing the actual facts of the case.

A third story of the death of Cambyses, that of Trogus, is also retained in an excerpt only. It is apparently taken from the Persian history of Deinon. "Cambyses added Egypt to the kingdom of his father. Enraged at the superstition of the Egyptians, he commanded the temples of Apis and the other gods to be destroyed. He also sent an army to conquer the far-famed temple of Ammon, but it was overwhelmed by storms of sand. Then in a dream he saw his brother as the future king. Terrified by this vision, he did not hesitate to add the murder of a brother to the burning of temples. For this horrible service he sent Cometes, a Magian, one of his trusted servants. Meantime, his sword coming accidentally out of the sheath, he wounded himself deeply in the thigh, and died, as a penalty either for the murder of his brother which he had commanded, or for the burning of the temples. When the Magian heard this he hastened to commit the crime before the news of the death of the king was spread abroad; and when he had killed Smerdis, to whom the throne belonged, he brought in his brother Oropastes. This brother was very like Smerdis in form and feature; and as no one suspected the deception, Oropastes became king instead of Smerdis. The matter was the more secret because among the Persians the king lives in retirement by reason of his majesty."[188 - Justin. 1, 9.]

Darius, in his inscriptions on Mount Behistun, has left us the authentic though very compressed history of Cambyses. "Kambujiya, the son of Kurus," he tells us, "was of our race, was previously king here. This Kambujiya had a brother, Bardiya by name, of the same father and mother as Kambujiya. Kambujiya slew this Bardiya. When Kambujiya had slain Bardiya the people did not know that Bardiya was dead. Then Kambujiya marched against Egypt. When Kambujiya marched against Egypt the people became rebellious, and the lie spread both in Persia and in Media and in the other provinces. There was a man, a Magian, Gaumata by name; he rose up from Pisiyauvada, from mount Arakadris, which is there. It was in the month Viyakhna, on the fourteenth day, that he rose up. He lied to the people; I am Bardiya, the son of Kurus, the brother of Kambujiya. Then the whole kingdom rebelled against Kambujiya; it went over to the other, both Persia and Media and the rest of the provinces. He took them for his own; he was king; he seized the empire. In the month Garmapada, on the ninth day, it was that he seized the dominion. Then Kambujiya died, for he took his own life."[189 - So Oppert according to the Persian inscription in "Journal Asiatique," 4, 17, 385, 386; and according to the second series, "Records of the Past," 7, 90.]

Hence we may establish the true course of events in something like the following form. Cyrus made a certain division of the kingdom; under the sovereignty of the elder son he assigned to the younger Chorasmia, Bactria, Parthia, and Carmania, and thus sowed the germ of contention between the brothers. The younger was called Bardiya. This name sounded to the Greek as Berdis, and then it passed into Smerdis, as Bagabukhsa becomes Megabyzus.[190 - Barziya in the Babylonian text. Smerdis, the favourite of Polycrates (Anacreon, fragm. 4, ed. Bergk), was no doubt named after the brother of Cambyses.] If Xenophon calls Smerdis Tanaoxares, and Ctesias Tanyoxarkes, this can only be an epithet which the Persians gave to Smerdis. The old Bactrian thanvarakhshathra would mean king of the bow. The Persians might give this name to Smerdis, as their poems celebrate him as the best drawer of the bow; it was this superiority of Smerdis which, according to the poems of the Persians, aroused the jealousy of Cambyses. The tradition of Iran can tell of the three best shots that were ever made:[191 - Sachau, "Albiruni," p. 205; Nöldeke, "Tabari," s. 91, 271.]– the best was made by Arshana, the son of Kava Kavata (V. 37, 253); and king Bahram Gor slays his beloved because she does not sufficiently admire his skill with the bow.

Bardiya did not accompany his brother to Egypt; so that he could not have been sent back from thence. On the contrary, Cambyses had conceived a suspicion of him even before the campaign to Egypt; he was afraid that his brother in Bactria would make use of the distance at which he would be to seize the throne in secret, and the more extensive the conquests which Cambyses intended to make in Africa the more dangerous would the possibility appear to him. He caused him to be put to death before he set out to Egypt. His death remained a secret. By whom and how Bardiya was killed, and how the secret was kept, whether by an arrangement such as that described by Ctesias or by some other means, we cannot decide. The kingdom, the Persians, and the princes of the Persians did not know but that Bardiya was alive. But the Magian Gaumata is aware of the fact. Of the writers of the West, Trogus Pompeius alone gives the true name of the usurper in the Grecised form of Cometes. As the name is correct in Trogus, the name of the brother of Cometes, whom he calls Oropastes, may also be correct. But the narrative in the excerpt in Trogus must be so far altered in accordance with the version of Herodotus that Cambyses left Oropastes behind as overseer of the palaces, and that he placed his brother Gaumata on the throne. In Ctesias the man who suggests the murder becomes himself the false Bardiya and the future king. The inscription of Darius speaks only "of the Magian Gaumata," of "his leading adherents." The rebellion of Gaumata was not delayed till the death of Cambyses, as Ctesias supposed. It occurred, as the inscription shows, while he was still on the Nile. During the absence of Cambyses the lie spread in Persia, Media, and the rest of the provinces. The inscription mentions the day on which Gaumata rebelled, and the place where it happened: at Pisiyauvada in mount Arakadris this false Bardiya arose. As the position of this place and mountain is not defined, as is elsewhere the case in the inscription of Darius, by the addition of the name of the country, we may assume that it was in Persia that the false Bardiya, as his interests and the position of affairs required, came forward, and that he first called on the Persians to acknowledge him as king and lord of the realm, as indeed he must have done if he desired success. The inscription does not tell us that Gaumata was a Mede, or that the Medes first recognized him as their king; it merely says: on the fourteenth of the month Viyakhna (i. e. in the spring of the year 522 B.C.) the whole kingdom rose in rebellion against Cambyses, both Persia and Media and the rest of the provinces. We shall see below that even after the fall of Gaumata it was not Media which gave the sign for rebellion against his murderers, but that that country followed the example of the Elamites and Babylonians, and was led by Uvakhshathra, a man of the race of Cyaxares. First Persia, then Media, then the rest of the lands recognized the false Bardiya as their king; "he took from Cambyses Persia, Media, and the rest of the provinces," says the inscription. Then in the month of Garmapada (i. e. in July or August) the false Bardiya was crowned at Pasargadae (V. 358). That Gaumata was recognized as king in Babylonia is not only proved by the assertion of Darius, but also by two Babylonian tablets, which are dated from the 20th Elul and 1st Tisri "in the first year of king Barziya."[192 - Elul and Tisri fall in September and October. The last year of Cambyses is 522 B.C. According to Herodotus, Cambyses reigned seven years and five months, and the Magian more than seven months; the two make up eight years. The number of the Persian days of the month are repeated in the Babylonian version of the Behistun inscription. Hence the Persians adopted the year of the Assyrians and Babylonians as well as their cuneiform writing, but they had independent names for the months. Unfortunately the names of the months in the Babylonian text are more frequently destroyed than not, so that we can only be certain in giving Kislev (November-December) as corresponding to the Athriadiya of the Persians, Tebet (December-January) to Anamaka, Iyar (May-June) to Taigarshis. Oppert maintains that we can also identify the Babylonian Adar or Veadar (Febr. – March) with the Viyakhna of the Persians; but the text is uncertain in this passage. Finally, we may with tolerable certainty regard Garmapada (i. e. the path of heat) as corresponding to July and August, to the Tammuz or Ab of the Babylonians. If Viyakhna is really Adar, the proclamation of the Magian took place in March, 522 B.C., and his coronation in Garmapada (July and August). This according to Darius was followed by the death of Cambyses. The two tablets quoted date from September and October in the first year of Barziya. According to Herodotus, the Magian reigned more than seven months after the death of Cambyses, i. e. down to the spring of 521 B.C. According to the inscription of Behistun, Darius slew him on the tenth of Bagayadis (i. e. sacrifice to the gods), which would thus be parallel to the Nisan of the Babylonians, i. e. to our April.] On the news of the rebellion Cambyses makes Aryandes satrap of Egypt,[193 - Herod. 4, 166.] and sets out against the usurper. On this march, at Ecbatana in Syria, according to Herodotus, i. e. at Batanea or Hamath, or at Babylon, as Ctesias asserts, or on the return to Damascus, according to Josephus,[194 - "Antiqu." 11, 2.] he died.

However dark may be the shadows which fall on the figure of Cambyses, it has received blacker traits than truth can confirm in the legends of Greece and Egypt, and, to some extent, in the poems of Media and Persia. We have mentioned the story which ascribes to him ambitious plans in his boyish years; in the estimate which the Persians form of him according to their poems it is only his love of wine which is reprobated. More important is the judgment which the Persians really passed on Cambyses; Herodotus tells us they called Cyrus the father, but Cambyses, because he was severe and ambitious, they called the master.[195 - Herod. 3, 89.] From this sentence – from despotic severity and violence, whatever may have been the degree in which they were present – it is a long way to the picture of the frantic tyrant which Herodotus has sketched on the basis of these legends and poems. What we know by credible tradition of the crimes of Cambyses, apart from his act against his brother, and the supposed outburst of rage against his sister, is limited to the penalty which he imposed upon Memphis for the murder of the herald and the crew, and the punishment of Sisamnes, one of the seven judges who was found guilty of bribery and unjust judgment. He had him executed, the corpse was flayed, and the judge's seat covered with the skin, on which the son, who was named his successor, was to give judgment.[196 - Herod. 5, 25.] The punishment of Memphis cannot be called cruel in the spirit of these times; and the punishment of the unjust judge is in the manner of an oriental prince who loves justice. The reign of Cambyses was undoubtedly marked by the effort to continue the acts of his father, and in this effort he shows both vigour and resolution. The idea of creating a fleet for the Persian empire was bold and happy, and bore fruits in the submission of Cyprus and Samos without a blow. The preparations for the campaign against Egypt were made with great prudence, and proved adequate and effectual. But even before he set out for Egypt he had cast the lot which decided his life. How far the conduct of his brother, which is suggested in the version of Ctesias, excused the suspicion of Cambyses, we cannot decide. He did not venture to leave the kingdom so long as his brother ruled over the eastern half of it; he feared his rebellion during his absence, and removed him out of the way. The painful secrecy of the deed shows that Cambyses was tormented with remorse and shame for this crime. At the gates of Egypt he conquered in a mighty battle. He used the victory to storm the strong border fortresses of Egypt, and then at once turned against Memphis, the most important city and fortress of the enemy. The treatment of the captive Psammenitus repeats the mild manner of Cyrus towards conquered princes; we have seen above what clemency Cambyses showed after the conquest was completed towards the Egyptians and their temples. In possession of Egypt, he intended to achieve in Africa what his father had done in Asia; far to the south and west the country was to be subject to the Persians. The campaign against Napata led to the conquest of that kingdom. By maintaining this conquest, the supremacy of Persia over Egypt was rendered secure from attacks on that side, and the negro tribes to the south of Napata were kept in obedience, though previously they had been visited by the Pharaohs only in flying incursions. It was at Napata that, according to the tradition preserved by Diodorus, Strabo, and Josephus, Cambyses lost his sister, and with her the hope of an heir, by his own brutal violence, as the songs represent, when his sister reminded him of the death of his brother. But Strabo and Diodorus observe, as has been shown above, that he named the city after his sister "to honour her." No doubt the disquiet of his conscience increased the longer he remained without children. What was to become of the kingdom after his death? The brother, whom he had killed, had only left a daughter.[197 - Herod. 3, 88; 7, 78.] Burdened with new anxiety, if not with new guilt, he turned back from Napata. The disaster, which befell the army at Premnis, and the failure of the expedition against the oasis of Sivah, though it did not involve the loss of 50,000 men, might seem to him proofs that he had brought upon himself the anger of Auramazda and Mithra. Then the Phenicians refused to march against the Carthaginians, and he was unable to compel them. The absence of any heir, the misfortunes which had fallen upon him, increased his inward torments. He became more distrustful, passionate, and savage. He may have sought forgetfulness in wine, but the remedy only increased his violence. He shrank from seeing again his home and the desolate house of Cyrus, and remained inactive and irresolute for a year and a half in Egypt; in spite of the danger which attached to the absence of the ruler of so vast a kingdom.

In Persia and the provinces nothing was known of the death of Bardiya. The neglect of the kingdom, the absence of the king for three years, inspire Gaumata with the courage to make use of his opportunity, and turn the secrecy of the crime against Cambyses. The Persians declare for the brother who is among them, as against the distant king who seemed to have forgotten Persia in Egypt; even the satraps of the other countries soon decide in favour of Bardiya, as for years they had seen nothing of Cambyses. In three months after his appearance Gaumata was formally crowned. The account of the rebellion startled Cambyses from his stupor in Egypt; he placed a satrap over the conquests he had made and hastened to Syria, where he learnt the full amount of the usurper's success. With anger he sees the crown of Cyrus on the head of a miserable pretender. If he is effectually to contend against the opponent who has risen to such power, he must acknowledge himself before the Persians and the kingdom as the murderer of his brother, and even if he makes this shameful confession, will the Persians believe and follow him? Will they not think that he announces the murder in order to thrust his brother from the throne? In despair he perceives that he has destroyed the house of Cyrus, and ruined the work of his father, the fruit of thirty years of effort and struggle. He sees no means of preventing the course of affairs, the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the cause. He acknowledges before the princes of the Persians what he has done, commands them to make good the damage which he has caused, and seals his declaration by taking his own life. Such was the tragical end of the son of the great Cyrus.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RISE OF DARIUS

"The Persians, when they heard the words of Cambyses," so Herodotus continues his narrative, "did not believe that the Magians had possessed themselves of the throne; on the contrary, they thought that Cambyses had said what he had said of the death of Smerdis in order to deceive them, that the whole of Persia might rise against Smerdis. They believed that Smerdis the son of Cyrus was on the throne; for even Prexaspes solemnly denied that he had slain Smerdis; after the death of Cambyses it was dangerous for him to allow that he had put to death the son of Cyrus with his own hand. The Magian who had taken the name of Cambyses reigned in security and showed great mildness to all his subjects. Immediately after he had got possession of the throne, he proclaimed freedom from military service and tribute for three years to all the nations over whom he reigned. But in the eighth month of his reign it was discovered who he was. Otanes, the son of Pharnaspes, was one of the first of the Persians in descent and wealth. He first conceived a suspicion of the Magian because he never went out of the citadel, nor allowed any of the leading Persians to approach him. Phaedyme, the daughter of Otanes, had been the wife of Cambyses, and with the rest of the wives she had passed over to the Magian. Otanes caused the question to be put to his daughter, whether the man with whom she lay was Smerdis the son of Cyrus, or another. She replied that she had never seen Smerdis, and could not tell who he was. Then Otanes sent a second time: 'If you do not know Smerdis, ask Atossa, with whom you and she lie, for she will know her own brother.' The daughter answered: 'I cannot speak with Atossa, or see any other of the women, for since this man, whoever he is, came to the throne, he has kept us all apart, and sent one in one direction, and another in another.' When Otanes heard this, the matter became yet clearer. He sent a third message to his daughter, saying: 'My daughter, you are come of a noble race and must accept the risk which your father lays upon you. If this man is not Smerdis the son of Cyrus, but the person whom I suspect that he is, he must not go unpunished for associating with you, and exercising dominion over the Persians. Do as follows: When you perceive that he is asleep, feel for his ears. If he has ears, be sure that he is the son of Cyrus, but if he has none he is Smerdis the Magian.' Phaedyme sent an answer to her father, saying that she would run the greatest risk in doing as he bade, for if the man had no ears, and she was found feeling for them, he would put her out of the way; however, she would do it. And when it came to her turn to go to the Magian, she did all that her father had bidden her; she lay with him, and when he was asleep she felt for his ears, and easily discovered that he had none. When Cyrus was king he had for some grave reason cut off this man's ears. When it was day she sent her father word how the matter stood."

"Otanes related all the circumstances to Aspathines and Gobryas, who were the first among the Persians and most worthy of confidence, and as they had also had their suspicions that the case was so, they listened to the proposals of Otanes. The three were of opinion that each should join with him the Persians whom he counted most worthy of confidence. Otanes brought Intaphernes; Gobryas, Megabyzus; and Aspathines, Hydarnes. To these six at Susa, Darius the son of Hystaspes came from Persia, for Hystaspes was satrap of Persia, and when he came, the six resolved to make him their associate. They met, pledged mutual fidelity, and took counsel. And when it came to Darius' turn to give his opinion, he said: 'I believed that I alone knew that the Magian was king, and that Smerdis the son of Cyrus was dead, and for that reason I came with haste to put the Magian to death. But as I feel that you also know this and not I only, we must at once proceed to action without delay; for that will be dangerous.' Then Otanes spoke: 'O son of Hystaspes, thou art the son of a brave father, and thou showest thy courage not less than he. But do not so hasten the matter without consideration; begin it with prudence. We must be more numerous, and then make our attempt.' Darius replied: 'Ye men that are present, if ye enter on the matter as Otanes wishes, ye will come to a shameful end. Some one who seeks his own advantage will betray the matter to the Magian. Ye ought to have taken the matter on yourselves and so accomplished it. But as ye have resolved to take in more confederates, and have confided the matter to me, it must be done to-day. If this day passes by, I tell you that I will allow no informer to be before me; I will myself betray you to the Magian.' When Otanes saw Darius so eager, he said: 'As you compel us to hasten the matter and allow no delay, tell us how shall we enter the palace and overcome them? You know yourself – if you have not seen, you have heard – that guards are set; how shall we pass by them?' 'Many things,' Darius said, 'may be proved by deeds and not by words; other things may be done in word but no brilliant deed corresponds to them. You know that it is not difficult to pass through the guards that are set. No one will prevent men of our rank; one will give way from respect, another from fear. Then I have an excellent excuse for passing through, if I say that I have just come from Persia and have to give a message from my father to the king. If an untruth must be told, let it be told. If a man seeks for no advantage to himself by his untruth, he who tells the truth may be a liar, and he who lies may be a truthful man. If any of the door-keepers allow us to pass willingly by, this will be in the future an advantage for him, but any one who opposes us will show at once that he is our enemy; we will then force our way and begin the work.' Then Gobryas said: 'We can never with greater honour win back the empire, or, if we fail, find a more honourable death. Are not we Persians ruled by a Mede, a Magian, a fellow without ears? Those of you who were with Cambyses when sick remember what he imprecated on the Persians if they did not seek to regain the dominion. At that time we did not believe him, we thought that he spoke to deceive us. Now I give my vote to you, Darius, and go straight from this consultation to the Magian.' So Gobryas spake and all agreed with him.

"While they were thus deliberating, the following incident happened. After solemn deliberation it seemed advisable to the Magians to make Prexaspes their friend; he had been cruelly treated by Cambyses, he alone knew of the death of Smerdis, and was of great influence among the Persians. For this reason they sent for him, and sought by pledges and oaths to bind him not to reveal to any one the deception he had practised on the Persians, and they promised him everything in their power. When Prexaspes agreed to do as they wished, they further proposed that he should summon the Persians under the walls of the citadel; mount a tower and tell them that they were governed by Smerdis and by no other. This request the Magians made because the Persians had great confidence in Prexaspes, and he had repeatedly told them that Smerdis was alive and his death a fiction. When Prexaspes declared his readiness they summoned the Persians to the tower and bade him speak. But he, purposely forgetting what they had requested, began to speak of the race of Cyrus, and when he came to Cyrus himself he enumerated the blessings which he had provided for the Persians, and going yet further he revealed the truth, declaring that he had concealed it before because it was dangerous for him to say what had been done, but now the necessity was laid upon him to reveal it. And now he said, that, compelled by Cambyses, he had slain Smerdis, and that Magians were on the throne. When he had imprecated a bitter curse upon the Persians if they did not win back the kingdom, and take vengeance on the Magians, he threw himself head foremost down from the tower. All his life he had been an honourable man, and such he died.

"When they had resolved to attack the Magians without delay, the seven Persians invoked the gods, and set forth on the way, without knowing what had happened to Prexaspes. When they had proceeded half the distance, they heard of it. They slipped aside to consider the matter. And Otanes with some others were of opinion that they must wait, for all would be in confusion, but Darius and the rest declared that without hesitation they must carry out what they had resolved upon. While they were thus at variance, seven pairs of hawks appeared, which pursued and tore to pieces two pairs of vultures. When the seven saw this they all took the view of Darius, and encouraged by the birds, went to the palace. When they reached the gates it happened as Darius expected. The guards respectfully allowed the first men among the Persians to pass through, as though they were led by some divine guide; no one suspected them, and no one asked any questions. But when they came to the portico, they came upon the eunuchs who carried messages in to the king. These asked what they wanted, threatened the guards for allowing them to pass, and detained them. The conspirators encouraged each other, drew their swords, struck down those who sought to detain them, and burst at a run into the hall. The two Magians were there at the time, consulting about the affair of Prexaspes. When they heard the noise and the cry of the eunuchs, they sprang up to see what was the matter, then hastened back and made ready for defence. One seized a bow, the other a spear. The first could not use the bow, for the conspirators were close upon him, but the other wounded Aspathines in the thigh and hit Intaphernes in the eye. The Magian with the bow retired into a dark chamber off the hall, and wished to close the door, but Darius and Gobryas hastened after him; Gobryas seized and held him, and when Darius hesitated to strike lest in the darkness he should hit Gobryas, Gobryas cried out: 'Strike even though you pierce us both.' Darius did so and smote the Magian only. When both were slain, their heads were cut off; the two conspirators who were wounded remained to guard the citadel; the other five rushed out, called the Persians together, and showed them the heads. When the Persians heard of the deception of the Magians, and what had happened, they thought it right to do the same; they drew their swords, and slew every Magian whom they could find, and had they not been prevented by the approach of night, not a Magian would have been left."

The account given by Trogus of the overthrow of the Medes, so far as it has been preserved to us, differs only in unimportant points from the narrative of Herodotus. In order to gain the favour of the people, the Magians remitted the tribute and military service for three years. This first excited suspicion in the mind of Otanes, a Persian of great position and discernment. He commanded his daughter, who was among the royal concubines, – they were secluded from each other, – to feel the ears of the king when asleep, for Cambyses (in Herodotus it is Cyrus) had cut off both the ears of the Magian. "Informed by his daughter that the king had no ears, he announced this to the princes of the Persians, urged them to put the false king to death, and bound them by an oath. Seven persons shared in the conspiracy; and to prevent any change of opinion in time, or any disclosure, they at once put their swords under their garments and went to the palace. They cut down all who came in their way, and so reached the Magians, who were not wanting in skill to defend themselves; with drawn weapons they slew two of the conspirators (in Herodotus these are only wounded), but they were overpowered by numbers. Gobryas seized one of them, and when his companions hesitated to strike lest they should pierce him along with the Magian, for the affair took place in a dark room, he called out to them to strike even through his own body. But by good fortune he was uninjured and the Magian was slain."

In the narrative of Ctesias, as we have seen, there is but one Magian, Sphendadates, whom Cambyses himself had placed on the throne of Bactria in the place of his murdered brother (Tanyoxarkes), and had commanded him to play his part. Astasyras, Bagapates, and Izabates are aware of the secret. After Cambyses, Sphendadates becomes king, whom Astasyras and Bagapates had determined to assist to the throne even before the death of Cambyses. "When the Magian was reigning under the name of Tanyoxarkes, Izabates came out of Persia, where he had brought the body of Cambyses, revealed all to the army, and insulted the Magians. Then he fled to the sanctuary, where he was seized and his head cut off. Then seven distinguished Persians met, and after pledging their faith mutually, they joined with themselves Artasyras and then Bagapates who had the keys of the royal citadel. And when the seven were admitted by Bagapates to the citadel, they found the Magian with a concubine from Babylon. When he saw them, he sprang up, and as he had no weapons – for Bagapates had secretly removed them all – he broke up a golden chair, and fought with the foot of this till he was cut down by the seven. He had reigned seven months."[198 - Ctes. "Pers." 13. The names of the Seven in Ctesias have been discussed already, Vol. V. 329 n.]