a commander, and could not be expected to fight with
enthusiasm on his behalf. There is also reason to believe that he was
generally unpopular on account of his haughty and tyrannical temper,
and his contempt of law and usage, where they interfered with the
gratification of his desires. Though we should do wrong to accept as
true all the crimes laid to his charge by the Egyptians, who detested
his memory, we cannot doubt the fact of his incestuous marriage with his
sister, Atossa, which was wholly repugnant to the religious feelings of
his nation. Nor can we well imagine that there was no foundation at
all for the stories of the escape of Croesus, the murder of the son
of Prexaspes, and the execution in Egypt on a trivial charge of twelve
noble Persians. His own people called Cambyses a "despot" or "master,"
in contrast with Cyrus, whom they regarded as a "father," because, as
Herodotus says, he was "harsh and reckless," whereas his father was
mild and beneficent. Further, there was the religious aspect of the
revolution, which had taken place, in the background. Cambyses may have
known that in the ranks of his army there was much sympathy with Magism,
and may have doubted whether, if the whole conspiracy were laid bare,
he could count on anything like a general adhesion of his troops to the
Zoroastrian cause. These various grounds, taken together, go far
towards accounting for a suicide which at first sight strikes us as
extraordinary, and is indeed almost unparalleled.

Of the general character of Cambyses little more need be said. He
was brave, active, and energetic, like his father: but he lacked his
father's strategic genius, his prudence, and his fertility in resources.
Born in the purple, he was proud and haughty, careless of the feelings
of others, and impatient of admonition or remonstrance. His pride made
him obstinate in error; and his contempt of others led on naturally
to harshness, and perhaps even to cruelty. He is accused of "habitual
drunkenness," and was probably not free from the intemperance which
was a common Persian failing; but there is not sufficient ground for
believing that his indulgence was excessive, much less that it proceeded
to the extent of affecting his reason. The "madness of Cambyses,"
reported to and believed in by Herodotus, was a fiction of the Egyptian
priests, who wished it to be thought that their gods had in this way
punished his impiety. The Persians had no such tradition, but