he scarcity of provisions. An historian,
who may almost be spoken of as contemporary, tells us that the wretched
soldiers, after having subsisted on herbs as long as they could, came to
deserts where there was no sign of vegetation, and in their despair
resorted to an expedient almost too fearful to describe. Lots were drawn
by every ten men, and he on whom the lot fell was killed and eaten by the
other nine.

[Herodotus visited Egypt some 60 years after the death of Cambyses,
454 B.C. He describes the Ethiopian campaign, III. 25.]

At last things went so far, that his subjects compelled this madman to
return, but only, with their slavish Asiatic feelings, to obey him all
the more blindly, when they found themselves once more in inhabited
regions.

On reaching Memphis with the wreck of his army, he found the Egyptians in
glorious apparel celebrating a festival. They had found a new Apis and
were rejoicing over the reappearance of their god, incarnate in the
sacred bull.

As Cambyses had heard at Thebes, that the army he had sent against the
oasis of Ammon in the Libyan desert, had perished miserably in a Khamsin,
or Simoom, and that his fleet, which was to conquer Carthage, had refused
to fight with a people of their own race, he fancied that the Memphians
must be celebrating a festival of joy at the news of his misfortunes,
sent for their principal men, and after reproaching them with their
conduct, asked why they had been gloomy and morose after his victories,
but joyous at hearing of his misfortunes. The Memphians answered by
explaining the real ground for their merry-making, and told him, that the
appearance of the sacred bull was always celebrated in Egypt with the
greatest rejoicings. Cambyses called them liars, and, as such, sentenced
them to death. He then sent for the priests; received, however, exactly
the same answer from them.

With the bitterest irony he asked to be allowed to make the acquaintance
of this new god, and commanded them to bring him. The bull Apis was
brought and the king told that he was the progeny of a virgin cow and a
moonbeam, that he must be black, with a white triangular spot on the
forehead, the likeness of an eagle on his back, and on his side the
crescent moon. There must be two kinds of hair on his tail, and on his
tongue an excrescence in the form of the sacred beetle Scarabaeus.

When Cambyses saw this deified creature he could discover nothing
remarkable in him, and