him, and swore to forget the past if he would consent
to lay down arms. To this he agreed, and reappeared at court; but once
there, his confidence nearly proved fatal to him. Having been invited to
take part in a hunt, he pierced with his javelin a lion which threatened
to attack the king: Artaxerxes called to mind an ancient law which
punished by death any intervention of that kind, and he ordered that
the culprit should be beheaded. Megabyzos with difficulty escaped this
punishment through the entreaties of Amestris and of his wife Amytis;
but he was deprived of his fiefs, and sent to Kyrta, on the shores of
the Persian Gulf. After five years this exile became unbearable; he
therefore spread the report that he was attacked by leprosy, and he
returned home without any one venturing to hinder him, from fear of
defiling themselves by contact with his person. Amestris and Amytis
brought about his reconciliation with his sovereign; and thenceforward
he regulated his conduct so successfully that the past was completely
forgotten, and when he died, at the age of seventy-six years, Artaxerxes
deeply regretted his loss.*

* These events are known to us only through Ctesias. Their
date is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they occurred
after Cimon's campaign in Cyprus and the conclusion of the
peace of Callias.

Peace having been signed with Athens, and the revolt of Megabyzos being
at an end, Artaxerxes was free to enjoy himself without further care
for the future, and to pass his time between his various capitals and
palaces.

[Illustration: 258.jpg VIEW OF THE ACHAEMENIAN RUINS OF ISTAKHR]

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving of Flandin and Coste.

His choice lay between Susa and Persepolis, between Ecbatana and
Babylon, according as the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter
induced him to pass from the plains to the mountains, or from the latter
to the plains. During his visits to Babylon he occupied one of the
old Chaldaean palaces, but at Ecbatana he possessed merely the ancient
residence of the Median kings, and the seraglio built or restored by
Xerxes in the fashion of the times: at Susa and in Persia proper, the
royal buildings were entirely the work of the Achaemenids, mostly that
of Darius and Xerxes. The memory of Cyrus and of the kings to whom
primitive Persia owed her organisation in the obscure century preceding
her career of conquest, was piously preserved in the rude b