CHAPTER IV.

CAMBYSES. " The race of mortal Man is far too weak To grow not dizzy on unwonted heights. " GOETHE, " Iphigenia." As soon after the death of Cyrus as the Persian arms were at liberty, we find them directed against Egypt. The former alliance of that country with Lydia might seem an adequate cause for the invasion, but it is too prosaic for the taste of Herodotus. He makes Cam- byses, the son of Cyrus, march against Amasis because he had practised on him a deceit something like that of Laban towards Jacob, by sending him as a wife the daughter of the late king, Apries, instead of his own. Cambyses was, at all events, no safe subject for a prac- tical joke, and Amasis might have found to his cost that he had jested once too often. Having purchased a safe-conduct through the desert by swearing brotherhood with the chief of the Arabs, * -by a process much the same as that described by modern African travellers, which consisted in the con- tracting parties mixing a little of their blood,t Cam-

• "The safe-conduct granted by the chief of the Bedouins,"

says Kinglake, "is never, I believe, violated." t " Several of our men made brotherhood with the Y^ezees, and A. c. vol. iii. E