family
and household, it was said, did not escape his fury. He killed his own
sister Roxana, whom he had married, by a kick in the abdomen; he slew
the son of Prexaspes with an arrow; he buried alive twelve influential
Persians; he condemned Croesus to death, and then repented, but punished
the officers who had failed to execute the sentence pronounced against
the Lydian king.*

* The whole of this story of Croesus is entirely fabulous.

He had no longer any reason for remaining in Egypt, since he had failed
in his undertakings; yet he did not quit the country, and through
repeated delays his departure was retarded a whole year. Meanwhile his
long sojourn in Africa, the report of his failures, and perhaps whispers
of his insanity, had sown the seeds of discontent in Asia; and as Darius
said in after-years, when recounting these events, "untruth had spread
all over the country, not only in Persia and Media, but in other
provinces." Cambyses himself felt that a longer absence would be
injurious to his interests; he therefore crossed the isthmus in the
spring of 521, and was making his way through Northern Syria, perhaps
in the neighbourhood of Hamath,* when he learned that a revolution had
broken out, and that its rapid progress threatened the safety of his
throne and life.

* Herodotus calls the place where Cambyses died Agbatana
(Ecbatana). Pliny says that the town of Carmel was thus
named at first; but the place here mentioned cannot well
have been in that direction. It has been identified with
Batansea in the country between the Orontes and the
Euphrates, but the most likely theory is the one suggested
by a passage in Stephen of Byzantium, that the place in
question is the large Syrian city of Hamath. Josephus makes
him die at Damascus.

Tradition asserted that a herald appeared before him and proclaimed
aloud, in the hearing of the whole army, that Cambyses, son of Cyrus,
had ceased to reign, and summoned whoever had till that day obeyed him
to acknowledge henceforth Smerdis, son of Cyrus, as their lord. Cambyses
at first believed that his brother had been spared by the assassins, and
now, after years of concealment, had at length declared himself; but he
soon received proofs that his orders had been faithfully accomplished,
and it is said that he wept at the remembrance of the fruitless crime.
The usurper was Gaumata, one of the Persian Magi, whose resemblance