THE THIRD BOOK OF THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS, ENTITLED THALIA. 1. THE above-mentioned Amasis was the Egyptian king against whom Cambyses, son of Cyrus, made his expedition; and with him went an army composed of the many nations under his rule, among them being included both Ionic and Eolic Greeks. The reason of the invasion was the following.1 Cambyses, by the advice of a certain Egyptian, who was angry with Amasis for having torn him from his wife and children, and given him over to the Persians, had sent a herald to Amasis to ask his daughter in marriage. His adviser was a physician, whom Amasis, when Cyrus had requested that he would send him the most skilful of all the Egyytian eyedoctors, singled out as the best from the whole number. 1 Dahlmann has well remarked, that the alliance of Egypt with Lydia (vide supra, i. 77) was quite sufficient ground of quarrel, without further personal motives. And Herodotus had already told us that the subjugation of Egypt was among the designs of Cyrus (i. 153). Indeed, two motives of a public character, each by itself enough to account for the attack, urged the Persian arms in this direction; viz., revenge, and the lust of conquest. Mr. Grote has noticed the "impulse of aggrandisement," which formed the predominant characteristic of the Per. sian nation at this period (vol. iv. p. VOL. II. 292). And the fact that the Egyptians had dared to join in the great alliance against the growing Persian power, would render them more particularly obnoxious. But "the spirit of the time" (as Dahlmann observes), "framing its policy upon the influence of persons rather than things, required a more individual motive.' (Life of Herod. ch. vii. § 3.) 2 Vide supra, ii. 84. The Persians have always distrusted their own skill in medicine, and depended on foreign aid. Egyptians first, and afterwards Greeks, were the court physicians of the Achæmenidæ. (Vide infra, iii. 129, 2 D 402 CAUSES OF CAMBYSES' EXPEDITION. 3 BOOK III. Therefore the Egyptian bore Amasis a grudge, and his reason. for urging Cambyses to ask the hand of the king's daughter was, that if he complied, it might cause him annoyance; if he refused, it might make Cambyses his enemy. When the message came, Amasis, who much dreaded the power of the Persians, was greatly perplexed whether to give his daughter or no; for that Cambyses did not intend to make her his wife, but would only receive her as his concubine, he knew for certain. He therefore cast the matter in his mind, and finally resolved what he would do. There was a daughter of the late king Apries, named Nitêtis, a tall and beautiful woman, the last survivor of that royal house. Amasis took this woman, and, decking her out with gold and costly garments, sent her to Persia as if she had been his own child. Some time afterwards, Cambyses, as he gave her an embrace, happened to call her by her father's name, whereupon she said to him, "I see, O king, thou knowest not how thou hast been cheated by Amasis; who took me, and, tricking me out with gauds, sent me to thee as his own daughter. But I am in truth the child of Apries, who was his lord and master, until he rebelled against him, together with the rest of the Egyptians, and put him to death." It was this speech, and the cause of quarrel it disclosed, which roused the anger of Cambyses, son of Cyrus, and brought his arms upon Egypt. Such is the Persian story. story of Alexander the Great having been born of a Persian princess. (See Malcolm's Persia, vol. i. 4, p. 70, and At. Eg. vol. i. p. 191.) The name Nitêtis is Egyptian, and answers to Athenodora, or Athenodota in Greek. The Egyptian statement that Nitêtis was sent to Cyrus, is more plausible on the score of her age; but it is not probable. Athenæus (Deipn. xiii. p. 360) makes the demand come from Cambyses, and places this war among those caused by women. May the story have originated in a Nitocris having been married to Nebuchadnezzar ?--[G. W.] CHAP. 1-1. LEGEND OF NITETIS. 403 2. The Egyptians, however, claim Cambyses as belonging to them, declaring that he was the son of this Nitêtis. It was Cyrus, they say, and not Cambyses, who sent to Amasis for his daughter. But here they mis-state the truth. Acquainted as they are beyond all other men with the laws and customs of the Persians, they cannot but be well aware, first, that it is not the Persian wont to allow a bastard to reign when there is a legitimate heir; and next, that Cambyses was the son of Cassandané, the daughter of Pharnaspes, an Achæmenian, and not of this Egyptian. But the fact is, that they pervert history, in order to claim relationship with the house of Cyrus. Such is the truth of this matter. 3. I have also heard another account, which I do not at all believe, that a Persian lady came to visit the wives of Cyrus, and seeing how tall and beautiful were the children of Cassandané, then standing by, broke out into loud praise of them, and admired them exceedingly. But Cassandané, wife of Cyrus, answered, "Though such the children I have borne him, yet Cyrus slights me and gives all his regard to the newcomer from Egypt.” Thus did she express her vexation on account of Nitêtis: whereupon Cambyses, the eldest of her boys, exclaimed, "Mother, when I am a man, I will turn Egypt upside down for you." He was but ten years old, as the tale runs, when he said this, and astonished all the women, yet he never forgot it afterwards; and on this account, they say, when he came to be a man, and mounted the throne, he made his expedition against Egypt. 4. There was another matter, quite distinct, which helped to bring about the expedition. One of the mercenaries of Amasis, a Halicarnassian, Phanes by name, a man of good 5 4 Ctesias made Cambyses the son of a certain Amytis (Persic. Excerpt. § 10), according to him the daughter of Astyages-a person not otherwise known, but whose name recalls that of the Median wife of Nebuchadnezzar (see the Essays appended to Book i., Essay iii. § 9, p. 400). Dino (Fr. 11) and Lynceas of Naucratis (Fr. 2) made him the son of Nitêtis, adopting the Egyptian story. 5 The Carian and Ionian mercenaries mentioned repeatedly in the second Book (chs. 152, 154, 163, &c.). Phanes, the Halicarnassian, might have been known to the father of Herodotus. 404 SOLE ENTRANCE INTO EGYPT. Book III. judgment, and a brave warrior, dissatisfied for some reason or other with his master, deserted the service, and, taking ship, fled to Cambyses, wishing to get speech with him. As he was a person of no small account among the mercenaries, and one. who could give very exact intelligence about Egypt, Amasis, anxious to recover him, ordered that he should be pursued. He gave the matter in charge to one of the most trusty of the eunuchs, who went in quest of the Halicarnassian in a vessel of war. The eunuch caught him in Lycia, but did not contrive to bring him back to Egypt, for Phanes outwitted him by making his guards drunk, and then escaping into Persia. Now it happened that Cambyses was meditating his attack on Egypt, and doubting how he might best pass the desert, when Phanes arrived, and not only told him all the secrets of Amasis, but advised him also how the desert might be crossed. He counselled him to send an ambassador to the king of the Arabs, and ask him for safe-conduct through the region. 5. Now the only entrance into Egypt is by this desert: the country from Phoenicia to the borders of the city Cadytis belongs to the people called the Palæstine Syrians; from 6 6 Herodotus appears to have thought that the Arabs were united under the government of a single king. Sennacherib (ii. 141) is "king of the Arabians and Assyrians;" and here the ally of Cambyses is spoken of throughout as "the king of the Arabians" (d Bariλeus τῶν ̓Αραβίων). This cannot really have been the case; and the prince in question can have been no more than the most powerful sheikh in those parts, whose safe-conduct was respected by all the tribes. 7 That is, Gaza (vide supra, Book ii. ch. 159, note 2). 8 By the "Palæstine Syrians," or "Syrians of Palæstine" (ii. 104, vii. 89), Herodotus has been generally supposed to mean exclusively the Jews; but there are no sufficient grounds for limiting the term to them. The Jews in the time to Herodotus must have been a very insignificant element in 8 the population of the country known to him as Palestine Syria (iii. 91), which seems to extend from Cilicia on the north to Egypt on the south, and thus to include the entire "Syria" of Scripture and of the geographers (Scylax. Peripl. pp. 98-102; Strab. xvi. p. 1063 et seq.; Ptol. v. 15, &c.). Palestine Syria means properly "the Syria of the Philistines," who were in ancient times by far the most powerful race of southern Syria (cf. Gen. xxi. 32-4, xxvi. 14-8; Ex. xiii. 17, &c.), and who are thought by some to have been the Hyksos or Shepherd-invaders of Egypt (Lepsius, Chron. der Egypter, p. 341). To southern Syria the name has always attached in a peculiar way (Polemo, Fr. 13; Strab. xvi. p. 1103; Plin. H. N. v. 12; Pomp. Mel. i. 11; Ptol. 1. s. c.), but Herodotus seems to extend the term to the entire country as far as the range of Amanus. (See |