The king returned to Memphis, his army much weakened, and his warlike ardour probably no less cooled, by this double failure; for he made no more trials to extend his empire. So humiliating a disappointment was not likely to sweeten his arbitrary temper, and to its effects we are inclined to attribute the sudden change which appears to have taken place in his conduct. We say appears, because up to this time nothing is related of his private life: it is not probable, however, that the historian would have omitted occurrences such as those which characterise it from henceforward. The seeds of the evil which now shot up had long been rooting themselves. Self–gratification had been the end, and his will the guide, of his actions; and on such persons uncontrolled power acts like a hot–bed, to draw up their bad qualities into tenfold rankness. Old tales make frequent mention of magicians being torn in pieces by the spirits whom they have called up. He who gives loose to the evil passions of his nature, has a worse set of fiends to deal with, than the grotesque imaginations of our forefathers ever figured, and will find it harder to escape from them in safety: what wonder is it if the reason proves unequal to bear the shocks of such a warfare? That the mind of Cambyses so yielded, the cruelty, impiety, and extravagance of his latter years, in which his conduct was as impolitic as wicked, will not allow us to doubt. Disappointment and vexation could not have produced the disorder, though they may have hastened the crisis and increased its violence.
The Egyptians referred this change to another cause. When Cambyses reached Memphis he found the city in great joy. Apis,[139] the sacred bull, one of their most venerated deities, had just appeared, and, as usual, the whole country celebrated it as a festival. The despot suspected, not unnaturally, that they were rejoicing over his defeat, and sent for the magistrates, to ask why the Egyptians, who had done nothing of the sort when he was before at Memphis, made such show of joy, now that he came there after losing his army. They replied, that their god, who was wont to appear at long intervals, had manifested himself, and that on this occasion the Egyptians always kept holiday. Cambyses said they lied, and therefore sent them to execution. He next sent for the priests, and being similarly answered, said that he would soon know whether any tame god was come among the Egyptians. At his command, the animal was produced; he drew his dagger, struck Apis in the thigh, and said, laughing, “Fools, are such things gods, composed of flesh and blood and penetrable to steel? He is indeed a god worthy of the Egyptians! For you, you shall not make a mock of me with impunity.” So saying, he ordered the priests to be scourged, and all persons found celebrating the feast to be slain. Apis died, and was buried secretly. From this sacrilege the Egyptians dated the madness of Cambyses. Others ascribed it to epilepsy, to which he is said to have been subject from his birth. The disease might have produced a liability to insanity, but it could scarcely have been the agent in working so sudden a change. The extravagances of Caligula, however, were referred by many to the same cause.
The change in his temper was first shown by the murder of his brother Smerdis, whom he had sent back to Susa in a fit of jealousy because he was the only man in the army who could draw the King of Ethiopia’s bow, even for two fingers’ breadth. After taking this step, he dreamed that a messenger came to him from Persia, with tidings that Smerdis sat upon the throne, and touched the heavens with his head. Fearing, therefore, that this vision portended his being deposed and murdered, he sent a trusty follower, named Prexaspes, to Susa, with orders to assassinate his brother. The commission was faithfully performed.
A sister also, who had followed him into Egypt, and with whom he cohabited, fell a victim to his intemperate passion. “Before this time,” Herodotus says, “the Persians never married their sisters, but he, wishing to do so, managed it thus. Knowing that he was about to act contrary to their customs, he sent for the royal judges, and asked them if there were any law permitting any one who wished to cohabit with his sister. Now the royal judges are select men among the Persians, who retain their office during life, or till convicted of some injustice; and it is they who preside in the Persian courts and interpret the laws and institutions of the nation, and all things are referred to them. So to this question of Cambyses they returned an answer that was both just and safe, saying that they could find no law permitting a brother to marry his sister; but they had indeed discovered another—that it was lawful for the king of the Persians to do whatever he liked. Thus, then, they did not break the law from fear of Cambyses; and yet, lest they should themselves perish out of regard for the law, they found another law to help him in marrying his sister.”[140] Cambyses and his judges seem to have been well suited. There is on record a better instance of courtly evasion, related by Waller. The poet went, on the day of a dissolution of parliament, to see the King, James II., at dinner. “Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neal, Bishop of Durham, were standing behind his majesty’s chair, and there happened something in the conversation these prelates had with the King on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His majesty asked the bishops, ‘My lords, cannot I take my subjects’ money when I want it, without all this formality in parliament?’ The Bishop of Durham readily answered, ‘God forbid, sire, but you should! You are the breath of our nostrils.’ Whereupon the King turned and said to the Bishop of Winchester, ‘Well, my lord, what say you?’ ‘Sire,’ replied the bishop, ‘I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.’ The King replied, ‘No put–offs, my lord—answer me presently.’ ‘Then, sire,’ said he, ‘I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neal’s money, for he offers it.’”[141]
It was another sister who followed Cambyses into Egypt, and perished there by his violence. She was present when he set a lion’s whelp to fight a puppy. The latter had the worst, till another of the same litter broke loose, and came to help it, when the two together beat the lion. The princess shed tears at the sight, and being questioned why she did so, replied that it was for the remembrance of Smerdis, and the thought that there was no one to avenge his death. The brute kicked her, and thereby inflicted a mortal injury.
He held Prexaspes, the person employed to murder Smerdis, in especial favour, and among other marks of it appointed that nobleman’s son to be his cup–bearer. One day he asked, “Prexaspes, what sort of person do the Persians think me?” He replied with unseasonable candour, “that they praised him very highly, only they said that he was terribly fond of wine.” Cambyses was very angry at the imputation. “Do the Persians,” he answered, “say that I am beside myself for love of wine? You shall see whether they speak the truth, or whether it is they that are beside themselves when they talk thus. If I cleave your son’s heart with my arrow as he stands without the door, then the Persians will be proved to talk nonsense: if I miss, then say that the Persians speak truth, and it is I that am mad.” He drew his bow, the boy fell, and he commanded that he should be opened: the arrow was found fixed in his heart. He turned to the father and said, laughing, “Prexaspes, I have made it clear to you that the Persians are mad, and not I. Now tell me whether you have seen any man who shot so well?” The miserable wretch, fearing for his own safety, replied that not even a god could have done so well.
Crœsus, who was kept in attendance in his court, as before in Cyrus’s, ventured to remonstrate on the course which he was pursuing, but so unsuccessfully, that nothing but a rapid flight saved him from furnishing another proof of Cambyses’ skill in archery. He was then ordered to execution, but the officers who had charge of him, knowing the value that their master set upon Crœsus, and expecting rewards for saving his life, concealed him until the king’s anger should be over. One day at length they produced him, when Cambyses was expressing his regret for the Lydian’s death. It is dangerous to calculate upon a madman’s conduct. The king said that he was very glad Crœsus was preserved, and put the officers to death for disobeying his orders.
He had now been absent from Persia three years nearly, when a revolt broke out; the natural consequence of so long a desertion of the seat of empire, especially under a despotic government; in which case the people, habituated implicitly to submit to those in authority, care little from what head that authority emanates, provided it is conveyed through the customary channels. On leaving Persia, Cambyses had appointed Patizeithes, a Magian, or one of the hereditary priesthood, to be steward or inspector of the royal household. This man probably possessed rank and influence, as, under all monarchies, the nobility have been eager to fill even menial offices about the royal person; perhaps his station gave him political importance, as in France, under the Merovingian dynasty, the Maires du Palais wielded the whole power of the state. He had a brother named Smerdis, closely resembling in person Smerdis the son of Cyrus; and knowing both that the latter was dead, and that the fact of his death was carefully concealed from the nation, he conceived a plan, founded probably on the reputed madness and necessary unpopularity of Cambyses, for dethroning him, and substituting his own brother as the son of Cyrus. The attempt seems to have succeeded without opposition: for the historian merely states that he set his brother on the throne, and sent heralds throughout the empire, to say that in future obedience was to be paid to Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and not to Cambyses. The herald sent into Egypt found the latter with his army in Syria, and (a service of no small danger) boldly delivered his message to the king in public. On this occasion the madman behaved reasonably, for instead of killing Prexaspes and the herald in the first instance, and then proceeding to inquire how Smerdis came to be alive, he began by investigating, and soon perceived the real state of the case. The true meaning of the dream already referred to then struck him, in which he saw a messenger from Susa, who told him that Smerdis sat upon the throne, and reached the heavens with his head. Some remnant of kindly feeling and remorse now touched his heart, and he wept to think that he had destroyed his brother to no purpose; but this soon gave way to a natural anger, and with his usual precipitation he would instantly have departed to assert his own empire, and punish the conspirators. But as he sprung to horse the button dropped off which closed the end of his scabbard; and the naked point pierced his thigh, the spot in which he had sacrilegiously wounded Apis. He thought that the injury was mortal, and asked the name of the city where he then was. It was called Ecbatana,[142] and in Ecbatana an oracle had forewarned him he should die; but he naturally interpreted it of the more celebrated Ecbatana, the residence of the ancient Median kings. When he heard the name he was sobered, and comprehending the oracle aright, said “Here then Cambyses, son of Cyrus, is destined to end his life.”[143] The wound mortified, and on the twentieth day after the accident he sent for the most eminent of his countrymen, and addressed them in these words: “Men of Persia, I am now forced to declare to you what I have hitherto concealed most carefully. For, being in Egypt, I saw in my sleep a vision which I would fain never have seen, and thought a messenger from home brought word that Smerdis sat upon the throne, and reached the heavens with his head. Fearing, therefore, to be deposed by my brother, I did more hastily than wisely, for it is not in man’s nature to turn aside that which is decreed: but I, fool as I was, sent Prexaspes to Susa to kill Smerdis, and lived in security when this great evil was done, never thinking that, though he was removed, some other person might rise up against me. And thus, being wrong concerning every thing that was to happen, I have needlessly become a fratricide, and yet am equally deprived of my kingdom. For it was Smerdis, the Magian, whose revolt the divinity foretold in my dream. The deed then is done, and be assured that you have no longer Smerdis, son of Cyrus, but the Magi fill the royal office; he whom I left steward of my household, and Smerdis his brother. He is dead, then, whose part especially it was to avenge the wrongs done to me by the Magi; dead, impiously murdered by his nearest of kin. And as he is no more, I am compelled to give in charge to you, O Persians, those things which at the end of life I wish to be done. I require of you then, and call the gods of our empire to witness, that you suffer not the sovereignty to revert to the Medes, but if they have obtained it by fraud, by fraud let them be stripped of it; if by force, by force do you recover it. And as you do this, may your land be fruitful, and your wives and flocks yield increase to you as a free people for ever; but if you recover not the empire, nor attempt to recover it, I imprecate upon you the reverse of all these things, and further pray that the end of every Persian may be like mine.” So saying, he bewailed in tears his whole condition. And when the Persians beheld their king weeping they rent their clothes, and made lamentation unsparingly.[144] Thus died Cambyses, in the seventh year and fifth month of his reign.
The Egyptians, who were horror–struck at the outrage committed upon Apis, and who ascribed the atrocities perpetrated by the Persian monarch to madness, the consequence of this crime, saw in the manner of his death a further manifestation of divine vengeance. Strange inconsistency, that men should believe a deity unable to protect his own person, and yet thus capable of inflicting punishment upon his injurer! In a similar spirit, the death of Cleomenes, King of Sparta, an event attended with remarkable and impressive circumstances, was attributed to no less than four different acts of impiety by different parties, each believing that it was caused by an infringement upon those things which they themselves considered as peculiarly sacred. Cleomenes’ mind was impaired before he ascended the throne, insomuch that his younger brother endeavoured to set aside the strict order of succession in his own favour. We may notice this as a strong proof of what has been said of the efficacy of moral restraint in preserving mental sanity, and checking the progress of existing disease. The strict discipline of Sparta, the subjection of her kings in common with all other citizens, not merely to written law, but to public opinion, was sufficient to restrain the wanderings even of an impaired mind; for though his reign was overbearing and violent, nothing is related of him which can be considered as a proof of madness until towards its close, when he became addicted to drunkenness, a vice especially contrary to the Spartan laws. Being proved to have bribed the priestess to return an answer suitable to his own interests on one occasion when the Spartan government consulted the Delphic oracle, he fled to Thessaly, and from thence to Arcadia, where he employed himself so successfully in stirring up war against Sparta, that he was recalled and reinstated. Shortly after he broke out into frenzy, having been before, says Herodotus, somewhat crazed; and being placed in confinement under the charge of a Helot, he obtained a sword from his guard, with which he deliberately cut himself into pieces, beginning at the legs and so proceeding upwards, until he reached the vital parts, and died.[145]
That so tragical an end should excite general attention, that it should be referred to the direct interposition of the Deity to punish some crime, is no wonder: what is chiefly observable, and characteristic of Grecian religion, is that no one thought of attributing the anger of the gods to moral guilt, of which Cleomenes had no lack, but merely to some injury or insult offered especially to the gods themselves. Hence, according to the religious prepossessions of the party speculating, there were four methods current of accounting for his madness. Some time before, when commanding in an invasion of Argolis, he had defeated the opposing army, and driven many of them into a wood sacred to the hero Argus (not he with the many eyes), from whom the Argians traced their descent. Unwilling to lose his prey, he at first enticed them one by one with promises of safety, and when his treachery was discovered, and they refused to quit their asylum, he caused the Helots attendant on the army to surround the grove with dry wood, and burnt it together with the wretches it contained. The Argians then said that the hero Argus thus avenged the pollution and destruction of his grove: the Athenians were equally confident that he was thus afflicted because he had once ravaged the sacred precincts of Eleusis: the other Greeks, who cared comparatively little either for Argus or Ceres, found a sufficient cause in his corruption of the Delphian oracle, which was consulted and venerated by all alike. And the Spartans, bigoted to nothing so much as to their own institutions, probably stumbled upon the truth when they said that there was nothing divine about the business, but that he was driven mad by hard drinking. A similar feeling led the royalists to see something extraordinary in the death of Lord Brooke, who was killed by a musket–shot in the eye, fired from Lichfield Cathedral, while besieging it for the Parliament in 1643. “There were many discourses and observations upon his death, that it should be upon St. Chad’s day, being the 2nd of March, by whose name, he being a bishop shortly after the planting of Christianity in this island, that church had anciently been called. And it was reported that in his prayer that very morning (for he used to pray publicly, though his chaplain were in the presence), he wished ‘that if the cause he were in were not right and just, he might presently be cut off.’” Others went still further, and observed not only that he was killed in attacking St. Chad’s church on St. Chad’s day, but that he received his death–wound in the very eye with which he had said he hoped to see the ruin of all the cathedrals in the kingdom. It is observable that the honour of the tutelary saint seems to have been more thought of than that of the Deity.