, and were, perhaps, on the point
of risking the attempt, when they received orders to withdraw. The march
across the desert proved almost fatal to them. The Libyans of Marmarica,
attracted by the spoils with which the Persian troops were laden,
harassed them incessantly, and inflicted on them serious losses; they
succeeded, however, in arriving safely with their prisoners, among whom
were the survivors of the inhabitants of Barca. At this time the tide of
fortune was setting strongly in favour of Darius: Aryandes, anxious to
propitiate that monarch, despatched these wretched captives to Persia as
a trophy of his success, and Darius sent them into Bactriana, where they
founded a new Barca.**

* This is the town which later on under the Lagidae received
the name of Berenice, and which is now called Benghazi.

** It is doubtless to these acts of personal authority on
the part of Aryandes that Darius alludes in the Behistun
Inscription, when he says, "While I was before Babylon, the
following provinces revolted against me--Persia and Susiana,
the Medes and Assyria, and the Egyptians..."

But this tardy homage availed him nothing. Darius himself visited Egypt
and disembarrassed himself of 'his troublesome subject by his summary
execution, inflicted, some said, because he had issued coins of a
superior fineness to those of the royal mint,* while, according to
others, it was because he had plundered Egypt and so ill-treated the
Egyptians as to incite them to rebellion.

* It is not certain that Aryandes did actually strike any
coinage in his own name, and perhaps Herodotus has only
repeated a popular story current in Egypt in his days. If
this money actually existed, its coinage was but a pretext
employed by Darius; the true motive of the condemnation of
Aryandes was certainly an armed revolt, or a serious
presumption of revolutionary intentions.

After the suppression of this rival, Darius set himself to win the
affection of his Egyptian province, or, at least, to render its
servitude bearable. With a country so devout and so impressed with its
own superiority over all other nations, the best means of accomplishing
his object was to show profound respect for its national gods and
its past glory. Darius, therefore, proceeded to shower favours on the
priests, who had been subject to persecution ever since the disastrous
campaign in Ethiopia. Cambyses h