The Historians' History of the World 02

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.