as over and the sacrifice offered,
the youths fell asleep, and never woke again. They were dead.
Herod. I, 31. Cicero. Tuscul. I. 47.]

"If I have ever been dear to you, Cambyses--if my counsels have been of
any use, permit me as a last favor to say a few more words. Psamtik knows
the causes that rendered us foes to each other. Ye all, whose esteem is
worth so much to me, shall know them too. This man's father placed me in
his son's stead at the head of the troops which had been sent to Cyprus.
Where Psamtik had earned humiliation, I won success and glory. I also
became unintentionally acquainted with a secret, which seriously
endangered his chances of obtaining the crown; and lastly, I prevented
his carrying off a virtuous maiden from the house of her grandmother, an
aged woman, beloved and respected by all the Greeks. These are the sins
which he has never been able to forgive; these are the grounds which led
him to carry on war to the death with me directly I had quitted his
father's service. The struggle is decided now. My innocent children have
been murdered at thy command, and I have been pursued like a wild beast.
That has been thy revenge. But mine!--I have deprived thee of thy throne
and reduced thy people to bondage. Thy daughter I have called my slave,
thy son's death-warrant was pronounced by my lips, and my eyes have seen
the maiden whom thou persecutedst become the happy wife of a brave man.
Undone, sinking ever lower and lower, thou hast watched me rise to be the
richest and most powerful of my nation. In the lowest depth of thine own
misery--and this has been the most delicious morsel of my vengeance--thou
wast forced to see me--me, Phanes shedding tears that could not be kept
back, at the sight of thy misery. The man, who is allowed to draw even
one breath of life, after beholding his enemy so low, I hold to be happy
as the gods themselves I have spoken."

He ceased, and pressed his hand on his wound. Cambyses gazed at him in
astonishment, stepped forward, and was just going to touch his girdle--an
action which would have been equivalent to the signing of a death-warrant
when his eye caught sight of the chain, which he himself had hung round
the Athenian's neck as a reward for the clever way in which he had proved
the innocence of Nitetis.

[The same sign was used by the last Darius to denote that his able
Greek general Memnon, who had offended him by his plainness of
speech, was doomed