" The
priests were beaten as impostors, and the bull languished from its wound
and died in a few days*1 its priests buried it, and chose another in its
place without the usual ceremonies, so as not to exasperate the anger
of the tyrant,** but the horror evoked by this double sacrilege raised
passions against Cambyses which the ruin of the country had failed to
excite.

* Later historians improved upon the account of Herodotus,
and it is said in the _De Iside_, that Cambyses killed the
Apis and threw him to the dogs. Here there is probably a
confusion between the conduct of Cambyses and that
attributed to the eunuch Bagoas nearly two centuries later,
at the time of the second conquest of Egypt by Ochus.

** Mariette discovered in the Serapseum and sent to the
Louvre fragments of the epitaph of an Apis buried in Epiphi
in the sixth year of Cambyses, which had therefore died a
few months previously. This fact contradicts the inference
from the epitaph of the Apis that died in the fourth year of
Darius, which would have been born in the fifth year of
Cambyses, if we allow that there could not have been two
Apises in Egypt at once. This was, indeed, the usual rule,
but a comparison of the two dates shows that here it was not
followed, and it is therefore simplest, until we have
further evidence, to conclude that at all events in cases of
violence, such as sacrilegious murder, there could have been
two Apises at once, one discharging his functions, and the
other unknown, living still in the midst of the herds.

The manifestations of this antipathy irritated him to such an extent
that he completely changed his policy, and set himself from that time
forward to act counter to the customs and prejudices of the Egyptians.
They consequently regarded his memory with a vindictive hatred. The
people related that the gods had struck him with madness to avenge the
murder of the Apis, and they attributed to him numberless traits of
senseless cruelty, in which we can scarcely distinguish truth from
fiction. It was said that, having entered the temple of Phtah, he had
ridiculed the grotesque figure under which the god was represented,
and had commanded the statues to be burnt. On another occasion he had
ordered the ancient sepulchres to be opened, that he might see what was
the appearance of the mummies. The most faithful members of his