CHAPTER III. THE EARLY ACHÆMENIANS AND THE ELAMITES, CYRUS AND CAMBYSES
When we speak of the political history of Persia, our thoughts turn naturally enough to Greece also. Yet there was a period of Persian history, which was brilliant, even though brief, in which Greece had no share even as a participant or objective point. And indeed the interest which Greece had for the Persian monarchs during the something more than two hundred years of Persian supremacy has no doubt been exaggerated in the minds of subsequent generations, because the whole picture has been seen through the eyes of Greek and not of Persian historians. The first great profane history that was ever written—the history, namely, of Herodotus—had for its main subject the Græco-Persian war.
The earliest pages of this history gave expression to the then current notion that almost from time immemorial there had existed a deadly feud between Greece and Persia, and the realm even of mythology is invaded in the effort to explain the origin of this feud, and to fix the responsibility for it upon an Asiatic nation. Yet, in point of fact, it is probable that no such widely prevalent feeling of antagonism between the representative nations of Asia and Europe had existed for any very great length of time, before the period at which Herodotus wrote. Indeed it is clear that a feud between the Persians, as such, and the Greeks could not have dated earlier than from about the year 550 B.C., since it was only then that the Persian empire came into existence. Nor is there anything to show that the first two rulers of the empire, namely, Cyrus and Cambyses, had turned their attention particularly to the region beyond the Hellespont. Cyrus indeed invaded Asia Minor, and in so doing necessarily came closely into contact with a Greek civilisation; but the express object of this invasion was the conquest of Lydia, which was accomplished through the overthrow of Crœsus, and Cyrus himself then turned back to conquer Babylonia, and whatever plans he may have had looking to the extension of his power in Asia Minor or beyond the Ægean Sea, he did not live to execute them. The short reign of Cambyses was occupied almost exclusively with the Egyptian conquest. Still it was inevitable that a conquering Asiatic power that had extended its bounds to the very walls of the Greek cities of Asia Minor must go farther in the same direction. It was equally certain that Greece must resent the infringement of its territories and thus the feud between the East and West was at once as inevitable and as bitter as if it had been much more ancient in origin than it really was.
The fullest details of the wars which grew out of this feud we shall have occasion to examine when we turn to Grecian history; nor can we quite disregard them here. Our chief concern for the moment, however, is with the history of the Medo-Persian empire in its Asiatic and African aspects. It is interesting to reflect that this empire was the greatest in mere geographical extent that the world had ever seen, far greater than Egypt, greater than the Assyrian empire at its widest reach, and greater than any empire that was to succeed it until modern times, except for the brief decade when Alexander the Great held the destinies of the East and the West subject to his master will.
It should be remembered, too, that this empire of the Medes and Persians held sway for a much longer period than is sometimes assumed. Cyrus, the founder of the Medo-Persian empire, came into power in the year 550 B.C., and the battle of Platæa, in which the army of Xerxes was completely overthrown and the last Persian force that ever attempted to invade Europe completely shattered, took place less than three-quarters of a century later. One is prone at first thought to date the fall of the Persian empire from this latter event; but to do so is to take a very narrow or European view of history. The Persians did not again invade Greece, it is true, but Persian money became a disturbing influence in Greek political life and continued such for a century and a half, or as long as Greece maintained independent national existence.
So powerful has been the influence of Greece in an intellectual way that one is prone to forget how insignificant a people the Hellenes were in regard to those matters which are usually made the test of national supremacy. Once, and once only, a united Greece became a mighty factor in international warfare; that exceptional time was the all-essential one, when Greece drove back the Persian invaders. But the territory of Greece remained unchanged after this momentous factor, and neither then nor at any subsequent period had the Greeks any thought of making wide conquests until the day of Agesilaus; and the aspirations of that Spartan chief, who at one time seemed likely to anticipate Alexander in a Persian conquest, were cut short by those suicidal internal dissensions which were the bane of the political life of Greece at all periods of her history. Meantime, while Rome was waxing strong in the West, she had not yet reached the horizon of a world-influence, Persia remained, notwithstanding her defeat on Grecian territory, the undisputed mistress of Asia and therefore the most powerful nation in the world, for more than two centuries after the death of Cyrus. And then it was no Greek, but the conqueror of Greece, the Macedonian Alexander, who wrested the sceptre from the Persian hand.
Two centuries and a half of supremacy! That does not seem a long period when one has the thousands of years of Egyptian history in mind or the other thousands when the plain of Mesopotamia was the centre of the Asiatic world. Yet after all in the narrow view it will be apparent that very few times in the world’s history has a single nation maintained supremacy for a much longer period than two or three centuries. Egyptian history is very far from being a record of unbroken power, and the centre of Mesopotamia shifted from south to north and back again at intervals of a few centuries at longest. When, therefore, one considers the two and a half centuries of unbroken Persian power, and reflects how enormously wide was the extent of that dominant influence, it is clear that he has to do with one of the greatest nations of which history has any record.
[ca. 836-546 B.C.]
Of the very early history of Persia there is almost nothing known. From the obelisk of Shalmaneser II we learn how after successfully invading the land of Namri, the Assyrian king marched into the territory of Parsua (Persia) and received tribute. This was in the year 836 B.C. Again tribute was collected in 830, and in the following year the country was plundered and ravaged by the Assyrian army. About 813 Shamshi-Adad IV paid an unwelcome visit to his province. From these and other references we may conclude that from the time the Indo-Europeans were fairly settled in the land, Parsua was a dependency of the Assyrian empire, regaining its liberties whenever the fortunes of Assyria were at low ebb, and losing them in a corresponding degree when a strong brain and hand held the reins in the capitals on the Upper Tigris. Then, as we have seen, Persia fell into the hands of the Scythian or Median emperor that ruled at Ecbatana, from whom it was delivered by Cyrus the Great.
[ca. 730-550 B.C.]
But before taking up the history of Persia, it is necessary to say something about the kingdom of Elam, for as we shall presently see, that was the land from which Cyrus came. Elam lay to the east and across a mountain range from Babylonia. Of the early fortunes of the country—the time of Chedorlaomer and other Elamite invaders of Babylonia we have now nothing to do; what concerns us is that in the eighth century B.C., Teispes, the king of Persia obtained possession of the Elamite province of Anshan. In all probability the Persian conqueror gave the new territory to his son Cyrus I; for according to Professor Sayce, “While Cyrus I, the great-grandfather of Cyrus the Great, reigned in Anshan, it is probable that Ariaramnes, the great-grandfather of Darius, succeeded his father, Teispes, in Persia. Both Ariaramnes and Cyrus I were sons of Teispes, and since Darius in his inscription at Behistun declares that ‘eight’ of his predecessors had been kings before him ‘in two lines,’ it is clear that both Ariaramnes and his son Arsames must have enjoyed royal power. We must assume, therefore, with Sir Henry Rawlinson, that Teispes was the conqueror of Anshan and that upon his death his kingdom was divided, the newly acquired conquest being assigned to Cyrus I, and his ancestral dominion to Ariaramnes.” (Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 519.)
Thus we see that a piece of the oldest history has become the newest. It must be clearly understood that Cyrus was not originally a king of Persia, but of the Elamite province of Anshan—a district that by his time included Shushan, the old Elamite capital, as well. Three years after the conquest of Astyages, that is in 546 B.C., he first calls himself king of the Parsu (Persians), but not before. How he came to be lord of Persia, we do not know, since this land was a totally different country from Elam, but it is extremely probable that his new title had some connection with the overthrow of the Scythian emperor. It is on the statement of Darius I that Cyrus has gone down in history as a Persian prince. Why this is so seems clear enough. Darius had to reconquer the disintegrated empire of Cyrus and Cambyses, and in doing so he wished to make himself appear the legitimate successor of his two great predecessors; therefore he makes Cyrus, like himself, a Persian prince, and we have seen how far this is true. But from Cyrus to Darius, ought we not to speak of the Elamite empire?
With the reader in possession of these facts, we now turn to an account of the origins of the Achæmenian dynasty and the reign of Cyrus the Great.[a]
Cyrus’ father was, just as Herodotus tells us, Cambyses (Kambujiya), his grandfather Cyrus, his great-grandfather Sispis (i.e., the Persian Chaispi, Greek Teispes). We can combine the contents of a cylinder of his, on the one hand with the list of Darius’ ancestors in Herodotus (VII, 11), and on the other hand with Darius’ own statement in the great Behistun inscription. The last list is shorter by three than that of Herodotus; but, as Darius says that eight of his family were kings, and that they reigned in two lines, while neither he nor his successors in their inscriptions give the title of King to his immediate predecessor, we must assume that the Behistun list of ancestors is somewhat curtailed; and we can with some probability draw out the complete list in exact harmony with Herodotus. We shall indicate the kings by figure and give the names in the ordinary Greek form.
Achæmenes. 1. Teispes. 2. Cambyses. 3. Cyrus. 4. Teispes.
First line. 5. Cyrus. 6. Cambyses. 7. Cyrus (Great King). 8. Cambyses (Great King).
Second line. Ariaramnes. Arsames. Hystaspes. 9. Darius (Great King).
Achæmenes (Persian Hakhamani), ancestor of the whole family, is perhaps not an historical personage, but a heros eponymus. According to our calculation Teispes, the first king, flourished about the year 730, therefore somewhat earlier than the foundation of the Median empire, but somewhere about the time which Herodotus assigns for the beginning of the independence of Media. Perhaps the rise of the provincial dynasty is connected with the weakening of the Assyrian power in Iran. Now on the cylinder Cyrus calls himself and his forefathers up to Teispes not kings of Persia but kings “of the city of Anshan.” Similarly on a lately discovered monument of still greater importance, a Babylonian tablet, he is called “king of Anshan,” but also “king of Persia.” It may be that the Achæmenians ruled in a part only of Persis; but we have just as good a right to assume that, as Herodotus and Ctesias assert, Cyrus’ father at least was governor of the whole province. His mother, according to Herodotus, was the daughter of Astyages. This may very well be historical, though the confirmation by the oracle which describes him as a “mule” (Herod., I, 55) does not go for much, since these oracles are tolerably recent forgeries, and it is conceivable that we have here nothing more than an example of the well-known tendency of lords of new empires in the East to claim descent, at least in the female line, from the legitimate dynasty. Ctesias, indeed, tells us that Cyrus afterwards married a daughter of the dethroned Astyages, Amytis (which was also the name of Astyages’ sister, wife of Nebuchadrezzar). Of course this does not absolutely exclude the possibility of Cyrus being the son of another daughter of the king.
[550-546 B.C.]
Stripped of its romantic features, Herodotus’ narrative of the rise of Cyrus is in fundamental harmony with the new document which we possess on the subject, in the shape of annals inscribed on a Babylonian tablet. According to Herodotus, Cyrus and the Persians revolted; Harpagus the Mede, who was in league with him, was despatched against him. A part of the Median army fought, but another part went over to Cyrus or fled. In a second battle Astyages was defeated and taken prisoner. Now the tablet tells us among other things: “and against Cyrus king of Anshan, … went and … Ishtuvegu, his army revolted against him and in hands took, to Cyrus they gave him.” Thereupon, it proceeds, Cyrus took Ecbatana and carried off rich booty to Anshan. This summary account of the Babylonian annalist by no means excludes the supposition that Cyrus had fought a previous battle against Astyages. Both accounts say that the treachery and faithlessness of the army procured Cyrus the victory. We might even harmonise the Babylonian document with Ctesias’ narrative that Cyrus was at first hard pressed and driven back as far as Pasargadæ, if there were not other grounds, quite apart from its fabulous embellishments, which render this account improbable.
The date of the overthrow of Astyages and the taking of Ecbatana is, according to the Babylonian tablet, the sixth year; and, as it is in the highest degree probable that the years in this memorial are those of the Babylonian king Nabunaid [Nabonidus] we must place these events in the year 550. Hitherto it has been supposed, following Herodotus, that the reign of Cyrus (559-529) was to be reckoned from the fall of the Median empire, and that accordingly the latter event was to be placed in 559. But now we see that Cyrus numbered his years from the time when he ascended the throne in Persia.[29] Whether the revolt against Astyages began when he ascended the throne, we do not know. We may very well believe Herodotus (I, 330), that Cyrus treated Astyages well, down to his death. On this point Ctesias agrees with Herodotus.
[550-538 B.C.]
After the taking of Ecbatana, which made Cyrus the Great King, he must have had enough to do to subdue the lands which had belonged to the Median empire. Little reliance can be placed on Ctesias’ account of these struggles. Herodotus (I, 153) states that the Bactrians, who according to Ctesias were soon subdued, were, like the Sacæ, not subjugated until after the conquest of Babylon.
The next war was against the powerful and wealthy king Crœsus of Lydia, who ruled over nearly the whole western half of Asia Minor. It was a continuation of the war between the Medes and Lydians which had been broken off in 585. Here again the story in Herodotus is embellished with many marvellous incidents, and is employed to exemplify moral doctrines.
If Crœsus really began the war, he assuredly did so not frivolously but deliberately, in order to anticipate the inevitable attack. A fierce struggle seems to have taken place in Cappadocia (Herod., I, 76, and especially Polyænus, VII, 8, 1 et seq.), which already belonged to Cyrus. Crœsus retreated to prepare for another campaign, but Cyrus followed hard after him, routed him when he offered battle, and captured his capital Sardis after a short siege. Not only Herodotus, but also apparently his contemporary Xanthus the Lydian, quite independently of Herodotus, told how Cyrus would have burned Crœsus alive. However, Crœsus was pardoned, after all, perhaps because some external circumstance interposed (because a sudden shower prevented the fire from burning?), or because the conqueror changed his mind before it was too late. The pious and believing saw in the event a direct intervention of Apollo on behalf of the man who had honoured the Delphic shrine so highly.
The date of Crœsus’ fall is not quite certain. It may have been 547 or 546. When Cyrus had marched away, the Lydian Pactyas, whom Cyrus had appointed guardian of the treasures, raised a revolt, but it was speedily put down by the king’s generals. From that time forwards the Lydians never made the slightest attempt to shake off the Persian rule.
But now began that struggle of the Persians with the Greeks which has had so much importance for the history of the world. The Lydian kings had subdued a number of Greek cities in Asia Minor; but even these latter shrank from submitting to the still barbarous Persians, whose rule was far more oppressive, inasmuch as they ruthlessly required military service. But Harpagus, and other Persian leaders, quickly took one Greek town after the other; some, like Priene, were razed to the ground. Some of the Ionians, such as the Teians, and most of the Phocæans, avoided slavery by emigrating. Miletus alone, the most flourishing of all these cities, had early come to an understanding with Cyrus, and the latter pledged himself to lay no heavier burden on it than Crœsus had before him. In most of the cities the Persians seem to have set up tyrants, who gave them a better guarantee of obedience than democratic or aristocratic governments. In other respects they left the Greeks alone, just as they left their other subjects alone, not meddling with their internal affairs so long as they paid the necessary contributions, and supplied men and ships for their wars. Most of the other peoples in the west of Asia Minor submitted without much resistance, except the freedom-loving Lycians. Driven into Xanthus, the capital, they perished in a body rather than surrender. Some Carian cities also defended themselves stoutly. This may have given a Persian here and there an inkling, even then, that the little peoples on the western sea were, after all, harder to manage than the nations of slaves in the interior of Asia. Sardis became and remained the mainstay of the Persian rule in western Asia Minor. The governorship was one of the most influential posts in the empire, and the governor seems to have exercised a certain supremacy over some neighbouring governorships.
Though Cyrus had made, and continued to make, conquests in the interior of Asia, he was still without the true capital of Asia, Babylon, the seat of primeval civilisation, together with the rich country in which it lay, and the wide districts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and the border-lands over which it ruled. Before the capture of the city, in the summer of 539, a great battle took place, in consequence of which Cyrus occupied the capital without any further serious fighting, since the Babylonian troops had mutinied against their king. Late in the autumn of 539 Cyrus marched into Babylon, Nabonidus, the king, having previously surrendered himself. The entrance of Cyrus took place on the 3rd Marsheshwan, which month corresponds nearly to our month of November. If, as the strict rule requires, we make the small remainder of the year after the taking of the city to be the first year of Cyrus’ reign, then the events in the text fall in 538. According to Berosus, Cyrus appointed Nabonidus governor of Karmania, east of Persis; but in the annals inscribed on the tablet it is said to be recorded that Nabunaid died when the city was taken. Cyrus certainly did not put down the Babylonian worship, as the Hebrew prophets expected; he must even have been impressed by the magnificence of the service in the richest city of the world, and by the vast antiquity of the rites. But he was no more an adherent of the Babylonian religion, because the priests said he was, than Cambyses and the Roman emperors were worshippers of the Egyptian gods, because Egyptian monuments represent them as doing reverence to the gods exactly in the style of Egyptian kings. Sayce doubts whether Cyrus could read their documents; we doubt whether Cyrus understood their language at all, and regard it as inconceivable that he learned their complicated writing; indeed, on the strength of all analogies, we may regard it as scarcely probable that he could read and write at all.
[538-529 B.C.]
The countries subject to Babylon seem to have submitted without resistance to the Persians. The fortress of Gaza alone, in the land of the Philistines, perhaps defended itself for a time. On the other hand, some of the Phœnician cities, which offered a sturdy resistance to other conquerors, submitted immediately, and remained steadily obedient to the Persians down almost to the end of the empire. It seems, however, that, as the real prop of the naval power of Persia, they were almost always treated with special consideration by the latter. In the very first year of his reign in Babylon (538) Cyrus gave the Jewish exiles in Babylon leave to return home. Comparatively few availed themselves of this permission, but these few formed the starting-point of a development which has been of infinite importance for the history of the world.
How far to the east Cyrus extended his dominion we do not know, but it is probable that all the countries to the east which are mentioned in the older inscriptions of Darius as in subjection or rebellion were already subject in the time of Cyrus. In this case Chorasmia (Kharezm, the modern Khiva) and Sogdiana (Samarcand and Bokhara) belonged to him. Agreeably with this, Alexander found a city of Cyrus (Cyropolis) on the Jaxartes, in the neighbourhood of the modern Khokand. He doubtless ruled also over large portions of the modern Afghanistan, though it is hardly likely that he ever made his way into the land of the Indus. The story of his unsuccessful march on India seems to have been invented by way of contrast to Alexander’s fortunate expedition.
THE DEATH OF CYRUS
[529 B.C.]
Different accounts of Cyrus’ death were early current. Herodotus gives the well-known didactic story of the battle with Tomyris, queen of the Massagetæ, as the most probable of many which were told.[b] His account is much too picturesque to be omitted here, notwithstanding its somewhat doubtful authenticity.
“When Cyrus considered the peculiar circumstances of his birth, he believed himself more than human. He reflected also on the prosperity of his arms, and that wherever he had extended his incursions, he had been followed by success and victory.
“The Massagetæ were then governed by a queen, who was a widow, and named Tomyris. Cyrus sent ambassadors to her with overtures of marriage; the queen, concluding that his real object was the possession, not of her person, but her kingdom, forbade his approach. Cyrus, on finding these measures ineffectual, advanced to the Araxes, openly discovering his hostile designs upon the Massagetæ. He then threw a bridge of boats over the river, for the passage of his forces, which he also fortified with turrets.
“Whilst he was engaged in this difficult undertaking, Tomyris sent by her ambassadors this message: ‘Sovereign of the Medes, uncertain as you must be of the event, we advise you to desist from your present purpose. Be satisfied with the dominion of your own kingdom, and let us alone, seeing how we govern our subjects. You will not, however, listen to this salutary counsel, loving anything rather than peace: If, then, you are really impatient to encounter the Massagetæ, give up your present labour of constructing a bridge; we will retire three days’ march into our country, and you shall pass over at your leisure; or, if you had rather receive us in your own territories, do you as much for us.’ On hearing this, Cyrus called a council of his principal officers, and, laying the matter before them, desired their advice how to act. They were unanimously of opinion, that he should retire, and wait for Tomyris in his own dominions.
“Crœsus the Lydian, who assisted at the meeting, was of a different sentiment, which he defended in this manner: ‘I have before remarked, O king! that since Providence has rendered me your captive, it becomes me to exert all my abilities in obviating whatever menaces you with misfortune. I have been instructed in the severe but useful school of adversity. If you were immortal yourself, and commanded an army of immortals, my advice might be justly thought impertinent; but if you confess yourself a human leader, of forces that are human, it becomes you to remember that sublunary events have a circular motion, and that their revolution does not permit the same man always to be fortunate. Upon this present subject of debate I dissent from the majority. If you await the enemy in your own dominions, a defeat may chance to lose you all your empire; the victorious Massagetæ, instead of retreating to their own, will make farther inroad into your territories. If you conquer, you will still be a loser by that interval of time and place which must be necessarily employed in the pursuit. I will suppose that, after victory, you will instantly advance into the dominions of Tomyris; yet can Cyrus the son of Cambyses, without disgrace and infamy, retire one foot of ground from a female adversary? I would therefore recommend, that having passed over with our army, we proceed on our march till we meet the enemy; then let us contend for victory and honour. I have been informed that the Massagetæ lead a life of the meanest poverty, ignorant of Persian fare, and of Persian delicacies. Let these therefore be left behind in our camp: let there be abundance of food prepared, costly viands, and flowing goblets of wine. With these let us leave the less effective of the troops, and with the rest again retire towards the river. If I err not, the foe will be allured by the sight of our luxurious preparations, and afford us a noble occasion of victory and glory.’
“The result of the debate was, that Cyrus preferred the sentiments of Crœsus: he therefore returned for answer to Tomyris, that he would advance the space into her dominions which she had proposed. She was faithful to her engagement, and retired accordingly: Cyrus then formally delegated his authority to his son Cambyses; and above all recommended Crœsus to his care, as one whom, if the projected expedition should fail, it would be his interest to distinguish by every possible mark of reverence and honour. He then dismissed them into Persia, and passed the river with his forces.
“As soon as he had advanced beyond the Araxes into the land of the Massagetæ, he saw in the night this vision: He beheld the eldest son of Hystaspes having wings upon his shoulders; one of which overshadowed Asia, the other Europe. Hystaspes was the son of Arsamis, of the family of the Achæmenides; the name of his eldest son was Darius, a youth of about twenty, who had been left behind in Persia as not yet of age for military service. Cyrus awoke, and revolved the matter in his mind: as it appeared to him of serious importance, he sent for Hystaspes to his presence, and, dismissing his attendants, ‘Hystaspes,’ said the king, ‘I will explain to you my reasons, why I am satisfied beyond all dispute that your son is now engaged in seditious designs against me and my authority. The gods, whose favour I enjoy, disclose to me all those events which menace my security. In the night just passed, I beheld your eldest son having wings upon his shoulders, one of which overshadowed Asia, the other Europe; from which I draw certain conclusions that he is engaged in acts of treachery against me. Do you therefore return instantly to Persia; and take care, that when I return victorious from my present expedition, your son may give me a satisfactory explanation of his conduct.’
“The strong apprehension of the treachery of Darius induced Cyrus thus to address the father; but the vision in reality imported that the death of Cyrus was at hand, and that Darius should succeed to his power. ‘Far be it, O king!’ said Hystaspes in reply, ‘from any man of Persian origin to form conspiracies against his sovereign: if such there be, let immediate death be his portion. You have raised the Persians from slavery to freedom; from subjects, you have made them masters: if a vision has informed you that my son designs anything against you, to you and to your disposal I shall deliver him.’ Hystaspes, after this interview, passed the Araxes on his return to Persia, fully intending to watch over his son, and deliver him to Cyrus.
“Cyrus, advancing a day’s march from the Araxes, followed, in all respects, the counsel of Crœsus; and leaving behind him the troops upon which he had less dependence, he returned with his choicest men towards the Araxes. A detachment of about the third part of the army of the Massagetæ attacked the Persians whom Cyrus had left, and, after a feeble conflict, put them to the sword. When the slaughter ceased, they observed the luxuries which had artfully been prepared; and yielding to the allurement, they indulged themselves in feasting and wine, till drunkenness and sleep overcame them. In this situation the Persians attacked them: several were slain, but the greater part were made prisoners, among whom was Spargapises, their leader, the son of Tomyris.
“As soon as the queen heard of the defeat of her forces, and the capture of her son, she despatched a messenger to Cyrus with these words: ‘Cyrus, insatiable as you are of blood, be not too elate with your recent success. When you yourself are overcome with wine, what follies do you not commit? By entering your bodies, it renders your language more insulting. By this poison you have conquered my son, and neither by your prudence nor your valour. I venture a second time to advise what it will be certainly your interest to follow. Restore my son to liberty, and, satisfied with the disgrace you have put upon a third part of the Massagetæ, depart from these realms unhurt. If you will not do this, I swear by the Sun, the great god of the Massagetæ, that, insatiable as you are of blood, I will give you your fill of it.’
“These words made but little impression upon Cyrus. The son of Tomyris, when, recovering from his inebriated state, he knew the misfortune which had befallen him, entreated Cyrus to release him from his bonds: he obtained his liberty, and immediately destroyed himself.
“On the refusal of Cyrus to listen to her counsel, Tomyris collected all her forces: a battle ensued, and of all the conflicts which ever took place amongst barbarians, this was I believe by far the most obstinately disputed. According to such particulars as I have been able to collect, the engagement began by a shower of arrows poured on both sides, from an interval of some distance; when these were all spent, they fought with their swords and spears, and for a long time neither party gained the smallest advantage: the Massagetæ were at length victorious, the greater part of the Persians were slain, Cyrus himself also fell; and thus terminated a reign of twenty-nine years. When after diligent search his body was found, Tomyris directed his head to be thrown into a vessel filled with human blood, and having insulted and mutilated the dead body, exclaimed, ‘Survivor and conqueror as I am, thou hast ruined my peace by the successful stratagem against my son: but I will give thee now, as I have threatened, thy fill of blood.’—This account of the end of Cyrus seems to me most consistent with probability, although there are many other and different relations.”[c]
If we accept Herodotus’ statements, we must look for the Massagetæ beyond the Jaxartes. In Ctesias Cyrus is mortally wounded in battle with the Derbices, who probably dwelt near the Middle or Upper Oxus. A fragment of Berosus says that Cyrus fell in the land of the Dai (Dahæ), i.e., in the modern Turkoman desert, perhaps in the southern or southwestern portion of it; this account may very well be derived from contemporary Babylonian records. Be that as it may, Cyrus met his death in battle with a savage tribe of the northeast. The battle was probably lost, but the Persians rescued his body, which was buried at Pasargada, in the ancient land of his race. To this day there is to be seen at Murghab, north of Persepolis (on the telegraph line from Abushehr to Teheran), the empty tomb and other remains of the great mausoleum, which Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander, described from his own observation; and on some pillars there the inscription is to be read: “I am Cyrus, the king, the Achæmenian.” Till lately the same inscription was also to be found high on the pillar which bears in bas-relief a winged figure of a king. This figure is furnished with a “pshent,” i.e., such an ornamented crown as is worn by kings and gods on Egyptian monuments. This was no doubt meant by Cambyses as a special mark of honour to his father, whose monument must have required years to finish. It is quite natural that the ancient art of Egypt should have made a deep impression even upon those of its conquerors who in other respects had little liking for Egyptian ways.[b]
CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF CYRUS
Cyrus played too great a part in the world and did too much for the progress of humanity that we should leave him without some account of the character and influence on history of a man of whom even so cynical a historian as Eduard Meyer has said, tersely but in words that demand special emphasis, “To honour and spare an adversary of equal birth, once he had been conquered, remained a privilege of all his successors.” After this we must indeed expect eulogy, but the short extracts given here, the first ancient and the last modern, are both founded on careful and loving study of the man’s character.[a]
Xenophon’s Estimate of Cyrus
The reflection once occurred to me, how many democracies have been dissolved by men who chose to live under some other government rather than a democracy; how many monarchies, and how many oligarchies, have been overthrown by the people; and how many individuals, who have tried to establish tyrannies, have, some of them, been at once entirely destroyed, while others, if they have continued to reign for any length of time, have been admired as wise and fortunate men. I had observed, too, I thought, many masters, in their own private houses, some indeed having many servants, but some only very few, and yet utterly unable to keep those few entirely obedient to their commands. While I was reflecting upon these things, I came to this judgment upon them; that to man, such is his nature, it was easier to rule every other sort of creature than to rule man. But when I considered that there was Cyrus the Persian, who had rendered many men, many cities, and many nations, obedient to him, I was then necessitated to change my opinion, and to think that to rule men is not among the things that are impossible, or even difficult, if a person undertakes it with understanding and skill. I knew that there were some who willingly obeyed Cyrus, that were many days’ journey, and others that were even some months’ journey, distant from him; some, too, who had never seen him, and some who knew very well that they never should see him; and yet they readily submitted to his government; for he so far excelled all other kings, as well those that had received their dominion from their forefathers, as those that had acquired it by their own efforts, that the Scythian, for example, though his people be very numerous, is unable to obtain the dominion over any other nation, but rests satisfied if he can but continue to rule his own; so it is with the Thracian king in regard to the Thracians, and with the Illyrian king in regard to the Illyrians; and so it is with other nations, as many as I have heard of; for the nations of Europe, at least, are said to be independent and detached from each other. But Cyrus, finding, in like manner, the nations of Asia independent, and setting out with a little army of Persians, obtained the dominion over the Medes by their own choice, and over the Hyrcanians in a similar manner; he subdued the Syrians, Assyrians, Arabians, Cappadocians, both the Phrygians, the Lydians, Carians, Phœnicians, and Babylonians; he had under his rule the Bactrians, Indians, and Cilicians, as well as the Sacians, Paphlagonians, and Magadidians, and many other nations of whom we cannot enumerate even the names. He had dominion over the Greeks that were settled in Asia; and, going down to the sea, over the Cyprians and Egyptians. These nations he ruled, though they spoke neither the same language with himself nor with one another; yet he was able to extend the fear of himself over so great a part of the world that he astonished all, and no one attempted anything against him. He was able to inspire all with so great a desire of pleasing him, that they ever desired to be governed by his opinion; and he attached to himself so many nations as it would be a labour to enumerate, which way soever we should commence our course from his palace, whether towards the east, west, north, or south.[d]
A Modern Estimate of the Character and Importance of Cyrus
The giant figure of Cyrus the Great appears all the more splendid in the sunlight [by contrast with the surrounding gloom]. He is fitly called the Great, as belonging to the small number of the immortals to whom humanity cannot deny this highest title. If he be great, it is because he attained unheard-of success with insignificant means. With the assistance of his son and his comrades he founded an empire such as the Assyrians never possessed even in the day of their highest power: an empire which stretched from the Pontus Euxinus to Meroë, from Cyrene to the Oxus and the Indus; the first world-empire, the realm of Alexander before Alexander’s time.
But he was not, like the latter, opposed to a huge and crumbling monarchy, already in the death agony, an easy prey to any leader of mercenaries, and proved to be so by Agesilaus in Asia Minor, and by Amyntas in Egypt; he was not, like Alexander, victorious over a small, dominant nation, which, in recompense for its narrow-minded policy, stood alone in the last decisive struggle, while he himself had an army of better morale and greater skill, with better weapons and superior numbers—a really overwhelming force. On the contrary, he led a handful of Persians against four nations, the largest and most powerful of their time; against the two powers which had overcome the greatest of all military states, the powers which had destroyed Asshur. The two rising kingdoms of Media and Lydia were in the full vigour of their youth, and had hurried from victory to victory, from conquest to conquest; the power and prosperity of the two ancient civilised peoples of the Nile and Euphrates dated from the very beginning of history and had risen anew and more formidable from every defeat; but he flung them all in the dust forever.
He was great, too, if it be great to fight and even to fall for the sake of justice. He is no proconsul, to turn, like a matricide, against the republic the sword with which she had entrusted him; no Albanian chief, Frankish king, or Mongolian khan to fall on foreign countries for the purpose of satisfying the greed for prey and lust of war proper to his race; but a king who, attacked by Media, attacked by the coalition of Lydia with Babylon and Egypt, only draws the sword in defence of the double crown of his ancestors—the most legitimate of all conquerors.
More than this, he was the most humane. His shield is stained by no horrible deeds of blood, of frightful revenge and cruelty, such as disgrace the son of Olympias. He spared, and made gifts to conquered enemies. Even after the second subjugation of the treacherous Lydians, he would not permit them to be destroyed by thousands, as Alexander did in the case of the heroes of Tyre, of the Pasargadæ who were faithful even unto death, of the nobility of Persia, or of the Sogdianians in revenge for their victory, as even the great Roman slaughtered his enemies at Thapsus and the betrayed Usipetii, and as the Franks slew the Saxons at the massacre on the Aller. He did not, like the Macedonian at Persepolis, burn and destroy hostile capitals; he did not mutilate captive kings and leaders, nor drag them round the walls as the latter did Bessus and the lion of Gaza; nor send them to the scaffold as the Roman sent the chivalrous king of the Arvernians; he did not basely murder his own countrymen as the “crazy god,” Alexander, murdered the Branchidæ, Clitus, and the grey-haired Parmenio. Oriental as he was, and belonging to a savage people and a far earlier period, he is still always far more humane.
Thus he was the greatest, far beyond the spirit of his nation and his age, anticipating the remotest future both as man and statesman. Because no wide stream of blood separated him from the vanquished, he found the only possible basis for his giant structure in the raising of conquerors and conquered to equal privileges. With the certainty of victory, the daring trust which belongs to the greatest, he could see and spare the subject in the enemy, raise the conquered at once to the rank of citizen, entrust his army to Mazares the Mede, and to Harpagus the Median grandee, prince, and general; in the newly conquered Lydia he could venture to invest the Lydian dynasts, with the civil power, and to set up as rulers in Ionia the native aristocracy, in Judea the descendant of the ancient kings and high priests.
It was in accordance with his teachings that his son marched in the festive procession of the people in newly conquered Babylon, and after the conquest of Egypt entrusted the civil administration, with the capital Saïs, to an Egyptian, Psamthek’s admiral, Uzahorsem, the son of the high priest of Saïs, who held it as “the king’s cousin,” i.e., viceroy, and on whose withdrawal the Egyptian prince Aahmes was associated with the Persian Aryandes.
Thus Cyrus divided the civil and military administration, a new departure amongst orientals, and long uncomprehended and unimitated. The military power he reserved to his faithful Medes and Persians; the civil he bestowed on native princes, and so arranged an automatic system which created the best bulwark against the loss of the border provinces, a bulwark which all the mistakes and crimes and all the cowardice of his successors destroyed only after the expiration of two hundred years—a result different indeed from the ephemeral creation which Alexander cemented with the blood of whole nations.
But gentleness and mercy constituted also the best policy. For defeating opponents without a battle they were the sharpest of weapons, carried by a commanding personality who not only compelled the admiration of his own people, but also brought his enemies to their knees, and showed his victory in the light of an inevitable decree of fate, thus infusing dejection and treachery into the ranks of the enemy. Who is there that approaches him? He is not only beloved by his own people as a father incomparable in every way, not only does all the splendour of story play round him as round Alexander and Charlemagne, but legends also have clustered about him, and the poetry of Xenophon and Antisthenes glorifies and idealises him. The Median prince and the Egyptian admiral, the nobility and priesthood of Babylon, as well as the Greek captains of the kings of the Lydians and Egyptians, with Eurybates of Ephesus and Phanes of Halicarnassus, throw themselves at his feet voluntarily, and to the betrayal of their own rulers; without a struggle the greatest empires, the two conquerors of Nineveh, surrender to him both themselves and their own kings in chains, as had been done to none other; even Tyre, that proud and mighty city, unconquered and unconquerable, with whose lion courage his predecessor and his successor, Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander alike, wrestled so fiercely and so long, did homage to him of her own free will, as did the sea-king of Samos, which was as far beyond reach as Tyre herself. Above all, the little people of the Jews hailed him at the waters of Babylon as they have done no mortal before or since, as the victor and rescuer, the liberator and saviour, the favoured of God and lord of the earth.
He rewarded them for it and so purchased for himself the most exalted, the most undying greatness: amongst all the rulers of the East whom we see conquering, destroying, murdering, and deporting, he is the only one who raised a downtrodden people from the dust, snatched it from its brethren’s fate of annihilation, restored it to its existence as a nation under princes of its own race, to its own peculiar development and its mission in the history of the world. He saved it, as he did his own people, which owed to him its consecration to eternal youth in history; so that, in spite of all the storms which have raged over it, it has escaped the fate of the thousand tribes which traversed the wide country of Iran before and after it, and are now vanished and forgotten.
Thus the consequences of his achievements are lasting, though in the course of thousands of years these achievements themselves have vanished, like all earthly things. He was not the product and child of his age, like the son of Philip, the nephew of Marius, the son of Pepin, or the offspring of the Revolution: but he was its creator and father, solitary and unique in the world’s history; he took firmer grip of the wheel of time than any other mortal; in the term of his life he brought an epoch to its close, snatched the lordship of the earth from the Semites and Egyptians, and won it for the Aryans for all time.[f]
CAMBYSES
[529-525 B.C.]
Cyrus bequeathed the crown to his eldest child, Kambujiya, called by the Greeks Cambyses, and the government of several provinces to Bardius (Smerdis), his second son. He thought that this pre-settlement of the succession would prevent the disputes usually accruing to the succession of a new king in the East. But this hope was disappointed. Cambyses had hardly ascended the throne when he murdered his brother: but the crime was committed with such care and secrecy that it passed unnoticed by the people, and it was thought by the subjects and court that Bardius was shut up in some distant palace in Media, from whence he would shortly reappear.
Freed from a rival who might have been dangerous, Cambyses then gave his full attention to war. Alone among the great nations of the old world, Egypt, protected by the desert and the marshes of the Delta, was able to withstand the power of the Persians, and followed in peace the course of her development. Since his unfortunate intervention in Lydia, Aahmes had always avoided any ground for strife with his neighbours. His ambition went no further than the establishment of the old suzerainty of Egypt in Cyprus. Thanks to this prudence, he lived on amicable terms with Cyrus, and profited by twenty-five years of tranquillity to develop the natural resources of his country. The course of the canals was repaired and enlarged, agriculture was encouraged, and commerce extended.
But it was impossible to withstand the hatred of his subjects, and it compassed his ruin. Cyrus dead, Aahmes resigned himself to war. There was no lack of serious counts against him: he had made an alliance with Lydia; he had intrigued with Chaldea; and Cambyses, being young, was more disposed to excite than to calm the warlike spirit of his compatriots. According to the Persians, Cambyses asked the daughter of the old king in marriage, hoping that his refusal would furnish him with an insult to avenge. But Aahmes substituted Nitetis the daughter of Uah-ab-Ra for his own daughter. Sometime afterwards, when Cambyses was with her, he called her by the name of her pretended father; whereupon she said: “I see, O king! that thou dost not suspect how thou hast been deceived by Amasis [Aahmes]; he took me, loaded me with jewels, and sent me to thee as his own daughter. It is true I am the child of Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] who was his lord and master, until he rebelled and was put to death with the other Egyptians.” The anger of Cambyses, son of Cyrus, was thus roused, and he took up arms against Egypt.
In Egypt the story was different: Nitetis was sent to Cyrus, and she was the mother of Cambyses, and the conquest was only the re-establishment of the legitimate family against the usurper Aahmes; and thus Cambyses ascended the throne, less in the character of a conqueror, than in that of Uah-ab-Ra’s grandson. It was by an equally puerile fiction that the Egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves for their weakness and disgrace. Always proud of their past glory, but henceforth powerless to conquer, they pretended that they were only vanquished and governed by themselves. It was not Persia that imposed her king upon Egypt, but Egypt who loaned hers to Persia and thence to the rest of the world. The desert and marshes formed a perfect bulwark for the Delta against the attacks of the Asiatic princes. There were ninety leagues of distance, which no army could traverse in less than three weeks, between the last important garrison of Syria and Lake Serbon, where the Egyptian outposts were encamped. In times past the stretch of desert was less, but the incursions of the Assyrians and Chaldeans had depopulated the country and given over to the nomadic Arabs regions which had been formerly quite accessible. An unforeseen event, however, showed Cambyses a way out of the difficulty. Phanes of Halicarnassus, one of the generals of Aahmes, deserted, and fled to Persia. He was a man of judgment and energy, and fully acquainted with Egypt. He advised the king to make friends with the sheikh who governed the coast, and get a passport from him; so the Arab had camels, loaded with sufficient water for the whole army, stationed all along the road.
[525-523 B.C.]
On arriving at Pelusium, the Persians learned that Aahmes was dead, and that he had been murdered by Psamthek III. In spite of their confidence in their gods and themselves, the Egyptians now began to be alarmed. They were not only threatened by the nations of the Tigris and Euphrates, but the whole of Asia and the Hellespont also seemed ready to invade them. The allies upon whom Aahmes had counted, such as Polycrates of Samos, and old subjects like those of Cyprus, had abandoned his cause, which now seemed hopeless, and supplied the Persians with forces. The people, consumed with fear of the invader, regarded the slightest phenomenon of nature as a bad sign. Rain is rare in the Thebaïd, and storms rarely come more than once or twice in a century; so, as some days after the accession of Psamthek, “rain fell in torrents at Thebes, which was a rare event, the battle before Pelusium was fought with the bravery of despair.”
Phanes had left his children in Egypt. His old soldiers, the Carians, and the Ionians in the service of the Pharaoh, killed them before his eyes, poured their blood into a goblet half full of wine, and after drinking the mixture, they dashed like madmen into the thickest of the fight. Towards evening the Egyptian line began to waver, and the rout began. Instead of rallying the rest of his forces, and defending the passage of the canals, Psamthek lost his head and took refuge in Memphis. Cambyses sent to demand his surrender, but the maddened people killed the envoys. After a siege of some days, the town opened the gates, and Upper Egypt submitted without further resistance; and the Libyans and Cyrenians offered a tribute without even waiting for it to be demanded. It is said that ten days after the surrender of Memphis, the conqueror wishing to test the imperturbability of his prisoner, gave orders for his daughter, who was dressed as a slave, his sons, and the sons of the chief Egyptians to march past him on their way to their execution. But Psamthek saw the procession without evincing a sign of emotion; when, however, one of his old boon companions went by, dressed in rags like a beggar, he burst into tears and struck his forehead in despair. Cambyses, astonished at this display of despair in a man who had seemed so self-controlled, sent to ask him the reason of his grief, whereupon he said: “O son of Cyrus, my personal misfortunes are too great for tears, but not so with those of my friend. When a man falls from luxury and plenty into misery on the threshold of old age, one can but weep for him.” When the messenger repeated these words to Cambyses, he saw their truth, and Crœsus was moved to tears, for he was with Cambyses in Egypt, and all the Persians present also began to weep. So Cambyses, touched with compassion, treated his prisoner like a king, and would probably have replaced him as a vassal on the throne, had he not learned that a conspiracy was being formed against him; so he entrusted the government of Egypt to Aryandes, the Persian.
Thus, for the first time in the memory of man, the Old World was under one master; but it was impossible to keep the people of the Caucasus and those of Egypt, the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Iranians of Media, the Scythians of Bactriana and the Semites of the Euphrates, under one ruler, so the empire dissolved as quickly as it had been formed.
[523-522 B.C.]
At first Cambyses tried to win over his new subjects by complying with their customs. He adopted the double cartouche, the protocol, and the royal costume of the Pharaohs; and in the double hope of appeasing their personal rancour and of conciliating the loyalist party, he repaired to Saïs, violated the tomb of Aahmes, and burnt his mummy; and after accomplishing this posthumous act of justice, he treated Ladike, the widow of the usurper, with deference and sent her back to her parents. He gave orders for the evacuation of the great temple of Nit, where Persian troops were installed to the great distress of the devotees, and repaired the harm they had done at his own expense. His zeal even led him to receive instruction in the Egyptian religion, and to be initiated in the mysteries of the goddess, by the priest Uzaharrasenti. In fact, he acted in Egypt as his father had done in Babylon, and he had his reasons for this condescension to the vanquished, for he hoped to make Memphis and the Delta the basis for his operations in southern Africa. He seemed to care little about the voluntary submission of Cyrene; at least Dorian tradition maintains that he scorned the gifts of Arcesilaus III and gave to his soldiers, in handfuls, the five hundred minas (Egyptian measure) of gold which the prince had paid him as a tribute. The Greeks of Libya were not rich enough to arouse interest, but the fame of Carthage, exaggerated by time and distance, excited his cupidity. Carthage was then at the height of her grandeur. She commanded the old Phœnician settlements in Sicily, Africa, and Spain, her navy had unrivalled sway over the western basin of the Mediterranean, and her merchants penetrated into the distant fabulous regions of southern Europe and Mauretania.
At first Cambyses wished to attack the city by sea, but the Phœnicians who manned her fleet declined to act against their colony. Forced therefore to approach it by land, he sent to Thebes an army of fifty thousand men to take possession of the oasis of Ammon, and to clear the road for the rest of the troops. The fate of this avant-garde was never clearly learnt. It crossed the great oasis, and took a northeasterly course towards the temple of Ammon. The natives relate that when halfway, it was surprised by a Sudanese storm, and was buried under the heaps of sand. This story was probably true, for it never reached the oasis, and never returned to Egypt. The expedition towards the south promised to be more fortunate, for it seemed that there would not be great difficulty in reaching the heart of Africa if it went up the Nile. Cambyses had the country explored by spies, and their account led him to start off from Memphis at the head of an army. The expedition was partially a success, and partially a failure. It seems that the invaders went up the Nile as far as Napata, and then pushed right across the desert in the direction of Berua; their provisions were exhausted when they were a quarter of the way there, and famine forced them to retreat, after having lost several lives. The result of the expedition was the subjugation of the cantons of Nubia, nearest to Syene, to the Persian dominion; however, the Egyptian people, always disposed to believe unfavourable reports of their masters, only took the failure at Berua into consideration.[30]
Cambyses had from his infancy been subject to epileptic fits, during which he was quite furious and unconscious of his actions. The failure of his efforts in Africa increased his illness, and added to the frequency and length of the attacks; he lost his former political power, and gave full fling to his naturally violent temper. The Apis bull had died during his absence, and after the expiration of the regulation number of days of mourning for the departed, a new Apis had been installed, when the Persian army returned from Memphis.
Finding the town en fête, Cambyses thought it was rejoicing at his misfortunes, and he sent for the magistrates and priests, and condemned them to punishment without listening to their explanations. The ox was brought to him, and he stabbed it with his dagger in the thigh. The animal expired a few days later, and the sacrilege caused more excitement amid the devotees, than the ruin of the country. The rancour of the people was increased when they saw the conqueror now as active in offending their deities as he had previously been anxious to conciliate them. He entered the temple of Ptah and mocked at the grotesque forms under which this god was worshipped. He violated the ancient tombs so as to examine the mummies. Even the Aryans and the people of his court were not safe from his rage. He killed his own sister, whom he had married in spite of the law forbidding marriage between children of the same father and mother. He killed the son of Prexaspes [by shooting an arrow into his heart as a proof that his aim was not the unsteadier for drink[31]], he buried twelve of the Persian generals alive, ordered the execution of Crœsus, and then, repenting of his precipitancy, condemned the officers who had not executed the order, which he regretted having given. The Egyptians maintained that the gods struck him with madness as a punishment for his sacrilegious conduct.
[522 B.C.]
As there was nothing to detain him longer on the banks of the Nile, he started on his return to Asia. On arriving at the north of Syria, he was met by a herald, who proclaimed, within earshot of the whole army, that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, had ceased to reign, and Bardius, son of Cyrus, was now king in his place. Cambyses thought at first that his orders had not been obeyed, and that his brother’s life had been spared by the man sent to assassinate him. But he soon learned that his orders had been only too faithfully fulfilled, and he bemoaned the useless crime, when he found that the usurper was a certain Gaumata, or Gometes, so strikingly like Bardius that the people were easily deceived. This Gaumata had a brother Patizeithes, to whom Cambyses had entrusted the care of his household. They were both cognisant of the death of Bardius, but they knew that the majority of the Persians were still ignorant of his death, and believed that the prince was still alive.
Gaumata therefore incited the rebellion in the town of Pasargada at the beginning of March, 522, and after a little hesitation Persia and Media and the body of the empire declared in his favour and solemnly accepted him on the 9th Garmapada (July), 522. Utterly overwhelmed at the turn of affairs, Cambyses took the head of the troops which had remained faithful to him, but he died in a mysterious way. The inscription of Behistun seems to intimate that he lost his life by his own hand in a fit of despair. Herodotus says that as he was mounting his horse his dagger entered his thigh at the same spot as he had stabbed the Apis bull.
“Feeling that his death was at hand, he asked the name of the place where he was, and he was told it was Ecbatana.” Now, some time before he had been told by the oracle of Buto that he would end his days at Ecbatana. He had always thought that Ecbatana was in Syria, so when he heard the name of the place, he recollected the words of the oracle, and said, “It is here that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, is destined to die”; and he expired twenty days later without leaving any posterity, or nominating a successor.[g]
FOOTNOTES
[29] [Or rather, as the latest authorities hold, of Elam.]
[30] [The exact fortunes of the expedition to Ethiopia have always been a matter of historical dispute. Dr. Prasek has recently made a most critical examination of all the ancient accounts, and concludes: “There seems to be no good reason to doubt that Cambyses reached Napata, and overthrew the old Ethiopian kingdom, which to be sure was later re-established at Meroë. But, returning through the sandy desert in the terrible heat of the summer, the Persian army had to endure the agonies of thirst, and its ranks were decimated.”—Kambyses und die Ueberlieferung des Altertums.]
[31] [See Herodotus, Book III, chap. 35.]
Ruins of Darius’ Palace, Persepolis
