Herodotus (Swayne)/Chapter 4

by George Carless Swayne

CHAPTER IV.

CAMBYSES.

"The race of mortal Man is far too weak
To grow not dizzy on unwonted heights."
—Goethe, "Iphigenia."

As soon after the death of Cyrus as the Persian arms were at liberty, we find them directed against Egypt. The former alliance of that country with Lydia might seem an adequate cause for the invasion, but it is too prosaic for the taste of Herodotus. He makes Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, march against Amasis because he had practised on him a deceit something like that of Laban towards Jacob, by sending him as a wife the daughter of the late king, Apries, instead of his own. Cambyses was, at all events, no safe subject for a practical joke, and Amasis might have found to his cost that he had jested once too often.

Having purchased a safe-conduct through the desert by swearing brotherhood with the chief of the Arabs,^[1]—by a process much the same as that described by modern African travellers, which consisted in the contracting parties mixing a little of their blood,^[2]—Cambyses set out for Egypt. But death, had put Amasis beyond the reach, of all enemies, and his son Psammenitus now reigned in his stead. Dire misfortunes had been portended to the country by the unusual phenomenon of a shower of rain at Thebes. After an obstinate battle, Psammenitus was utterly routed. Herodotus went afterwards over the field, and saw there the bones of the Persians lying in one heap, and those of the Egyptians in another. He remarked that the skulls of the former might be broken by a pebble, while those of the latter resisted even a large stone. This observation he afterwards verified by personal inspection of another battle-field, where a Persian force was subsequently defeated by the revolted Egyptians under Inaros. He attributes the difference to the Egyptians going bareheaded in the sun, while the Persians wore turbans. The Persians followed up their victory by the capture of the city of Memphis and of Psammenitus himself, on which occasion our author introduces one of his characteristic pathetic stories. Cambyses wishing, says Herodotus, "to try the spirit" of his royal prisoner, ordered Psammenitus and some of the captive nobles to be brought out to the gates of the city. Then he caused the deposed king's daughter, and those of the nobles, to be led past, in the dress of slaves, carrying pitchers on their heads. The nobles wept at the sight, but Psammenitus only bowed his head. Next followed his son and two thousand other young Egyptians, going to execution with ropes round their necks. The people of Memphis had torn limb from limb the crew of a ship which Cambyses had sent with a summons to surrender, and this was his reprisal—ten for every man murdered. The nobles again wept and wailed loudly, but Psammenitus comported himself as before. But when he saw one of his former boon companions, an old man now reduced to beggary, asking alms from the soldiers, then his grief broke forth in tears, and he beat himself on the head. Cambyses was amazed that he should weep at the fate of his friend, and not at that of his daughter or son, and sent to ask him the reason of his strange conduct. Psammenitus answered, "O son of Cyrus, mine own misfortunes were too great for tears." Cambyses was sufficiently touched to order the life of the young prince to be spared, but the reprieve came too late. But from that time Psammenitus was treated better, and might, as Herodotus thinks, had he shown more tact, have been appointed governor of Egypt, since it was the Persian custom thus to honour fallen princes, even giving the kingdoms of rebel vassals to their sons.^[3] But he was unwise enough to plot rebellion, and Cambyses, discovering this, put him to death.

And now the son of Cyrus entered on that career of impiety which was certain to have an evil end. He had the body of his enemy Amasis, who had escaped his vengeance while living, torn from its tomb, scourged, and committed to the flames—an act horrible to the Persians, who worshipped fire; horrible to the Egyptians, who looked upon that element as a devouring monster to whom it was impious to give their dead. Then, according to Greek poetical justice, he was seized by infatuation. He planned wild expeditions—one against "the Long-lived" Ethiopians, who dwelt far away to the south, and who might perhaps be identified with the modern Abyssinians (Heeren thinks, with the Somalis) by certain characteristics, such as tall stature, regular though black features, and a great love of animal food. Whoever they were, they are the subject of one of our author's most characteristic narratives. Cambyses sent envoys to them—men of the tribe of "Fish-eaters," who knew their language—with presents for their king; a purple robe, a collar and armlets of gold, and a cask of palm-wine, tokens of his goodwill, as "the things in which he himself most delighted." The Ethiopian king—who was elected for his stature and beauty—made answer almost in the words of Joseph to his brethren: "Surely to search out the land are ye come hither." He asked how the purple robe was made; and when they explained the mystery of the dye, he said that the Persians' garments, like themselves, were deceitful. When told the purpose of the golden collar and armlets, he chose to consider them as fetters, and remarked that "the Ethiopians made them stronger." In fact, as Herodotus declares, the envoys saw men afterwards in prison actually wearing fetters of a metal which was there so plentiful. Only the wine he highly approved of, and asked what the king of Persia ate, and how long men lived in that country. When he heard that corn was the staple food, and that it grew out of the earth, and that eighty years was considered a long life, he replied that he did not wonder at the king's dying so young if he "ate dirt," and that nothing, he was persuaded, could keep him alive even so long, except that excellent liquor. He sent back in return an unstrung bow, with advice that, when the Persians could find a man to bend it, they should then think of attacking the "Long-livers."

Against this distant tribe, however, the Persian king set out with a vast army, without bestowing a thought on his commissariat. Before he had accomplished a fifth of the distance the provisions failed, but he still pushed on. The army fed on the sumpter-beasts till they were exhausted; then on herbs and grass, till they came to the sandy desert, where vegetation ended. At last, when he heard of cannibalism in the ranks, Cambyses thought it was time to return; but he succeeded in bringing back only a small remnant of his host. Another expedition, sent against the temple of Ammon, in the great Oasis, fared even worse, for no news came of it more. It perished, our author thinks, in a sandstorm—more probably from want of water. But Cambyses' heart was hardened. "When he returned from his ill-starred march, he found the Egyptians holding high festival. This greatly incensed him, for he thought they were rejoicing at his defeat. But they were innocently celebrating the incarnation of their national god Apis or Epaphus, who was said to appear from time to time in the similitude "of a calf that eateth hay," and whose "avatar" in that form was denoted by certain sacred marks known to his priests. Cambyses was still more angry when he heard the real cause of this national jubilee: he had the priests scourged all round, forbade the people to rejoice on pain of death, and, to crown all, fell on the sacred beast and wounded him with his dagger, so that he pined away and died. From this precise date, as the Egyptians averred, the madness of Cambyses took a more decided character. But his acts, however unaccountable to a Greek mind, seem to have been little more than those of an Eastern despot of fierce passions and naturally cruel disposition. First he had his brother Smerdis put to death, and then he killed his sister because she mourned for Smerdis. He had sent this brother back to Persia because he excited his jealousy by being the only Persian who could just move the Ethiopian's bow; and then, having dreamed that he saw Smerdis sitting on his throne and touching heaven with his head, he sent a nobleman named Prexaspes to Susa, who slew him according to his instructions. The story of the murder of the sister was differently told by the Persians and Egyptians. The former said that Cambyses, in the presence of his sister, had set a puppy to fight a lion-cub. The dog was getting the worst of it, when another of the same litter broke the cord that tied him, and came "to help his brother," and both of them together mastered the young lion. Cambyses was amused, but his sister wept, and said that she could not but think of Smerdis, who had no brother to help him. For this speech he killed her. The Egyptians said that the pair were seated at table, when the sister took a lettuce, and, stripping its leaves off, asked Cambyses whether it looked better with its leaves off or on? He answered, "With its leaves on." "Then why," said she, "didst thou strip of its leaves the stem of Cyrus?" A furious kick which followed this remark was the cause of her death. In fact, Cambyses had now become dangerous to all about him. Crœsus, whom he had brought with him to Egypt, had more than one narrow escape. On one occasion officers were sent to put him to death, but they, knowing their master's moods, only pretended to have done it, and produced Crœsus alive as soon as Cambyses was heard to regret the order. He was well pleased that his friend had not been killed, but the disobedience cost the guards their lives. Another time he shot the son of Prexaspes through the heart to prove the steadiness of his hand, merely because the father had told him, in answer to a question, that the Persians said he was rather too fond of wine. Probably for some similar offensive remark he buried up to their necks twelve of his nobles—a cruel process still practised in the East under the name of "tree-planting."^[4] And he grew more and more profane. He opened tombs and unrolled mummies like a modern virtuoso. He made sport of the pigmy images of Pthah, or Vulcan, whose ludicrous ugliness must have presented the grim humorist with an irresistible temptation,^[5] and other sacred idols he burnt. Herodotus expresses himself much shocked at all this; but he might have known that the Persians were in general iconoclasts. It is possible that Cambyses was inspired with the same destructive zeal which induced the more modern Puritans to clear away the saints from the niches of our cathedrals. But as a Greek, our author would sympathise with the Egyptians. It is hard for us to judge how far some of the cruelties reported of Cambyses may have been the invention of the outraged priests. He has recorded, in another part of his work, an anecdote which illustrates at once the character of Cambyses and the general incorruptibility of the royal judges of Persia. One of these, named Sisamnes, was found to have accepted bribes. Cambyses, with the facetious cruelty so common to tyrants of his type, had him flayed, and his skin stretched over the seat which he had occupied while administering the law. He then appointed his son to the vacant post, charging him at the same time never to forget "on what kind of cushion he was sitting."

The modern reader will agree with Herodotus that it is at least right to treat with delicacy the peculiar usages of others. Aristotle quotes one of his anecdotes to illustrate the opinion of those who held that all right and wrong were conventional. King Darius Hystaspes called certain Greeks into his presence, and asked them what they would take to eat their dead fathers? They said that they would do it for no consideration whatever. Then he asked a certain tribe of Indians what they would take not to eat the bodies of their fathers, but to burn them like the Greeks? They cried aloud, and begged him not to blaspheme. So Sir John Lubbock, in his 'Prehistoric Times,' relates that the Tahitians think it indecent to dine in company; and that as soon as a child is born he is accounted the head of his family, and takes precedence of his father. And the tyranny of public opinion in matters indifferent, of which we complain so often, finds its strongest exemplification among the semi-brutal savages of Australia.

The death of Smerdis had come to the knowledge of but few persons in Persia, and while Cambyses was absent in Egypt, the priest-caste of the Magi made a bold attempt at a revolution. It is probable that under Cyrus and Cambyses this caste, with their peculiar tenets, had been discouraged. A certain Magian, who was a kind of groom of the palace, had a brother who resembled greatly the dead Smerdis, and who (according to Herodotus) bore the same name.^[6] Patizethes seated this brother on the throne, and sent out a proclamation that henceforth all men were to do homage to Smerdis the son of Cyrus, and no longer to Cambyses. When Cambyses heard of this, he thought that Prexaspes had not done his errand, and that it was really his brother Smerdis who had revolted against him; but Prexaspes satisfied him that his orders had been duly executed, and that this was a usurper personating the dead prince. He was at once struck by remorse, seeing that his fratricide had been useless, for his dream was so far fulfilled that a man called Smerdis sat on his throne; and he prepared to march at once in person to Susa to quell the rebellion. As he was mounting his horse, the knob of his sword-sheath fell off, and the bare point of the weapon pierced his thigh, exactly as he had pierced with his dagger the god Apis. His wound brought him to his senses, and he solemnly conjured the Persian nobles to prevent the empire from passing to the Medes, confessing that he had killed his brother Smerdis, and that therefore the present occupant of the throne must be an impostor. The wounded limb soon mortified, and Cambyses died in Egypt, leaving no issue. Before his death, he asked the name of the village where he lay. He was answered that it was called "Ecbatana." Then he knew that he should die; for an oracle had long ago predicted that he should die at Ecbatana,—which he naturally took to be his own town in Media. The coincidence with the death of our own Henry IV. in the "Jerusalem chamber" is very curious.

"It hath been prophesied to me many years
I should not die but in Jerusalem,
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land;—
But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie,—
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."^[7]

1. "The safe-conduct granted by the chief of the Bedouins," says Kinglake, "is never, I believe, violated."
2. "Several of our men made brotherhood with the Wezees, and the process between Bombay and the sultan's son, Keerenga, may be mentioned. My consent having been given, a mat is spread, and a confidential party or surgeon attends on each. All four squat, as if to have a game at whist; before them are two clean leaves, a little grease, and a spear-head; a cut is made under the ribs of the left side of each party, a drop of blood put on a leaf and exchanged by the surgeons, who rub it with butter twice into the wound with the leaf, which is now torn in pieces and strewn over the "brothers' " heads. A solemn address is made by the older of the attendants, and they conclude the ceremony by rubbing their own sides with butter, shaking hands, and wishing each other success."—Grant's 'Walk through Africa,' p. 108.
3. We have notable instances of this habit in Eastern monarchs recorded in Scripture. Jehoiakim is made king instead of his brother Jehoahaz, by Pharaoh-Nechoh (2 Kings xxiii. 34); Mattaniah instead of his nephew Jehoiachin, by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxiv. 17).
4. "Feti-All-Shah once sent for Astrachan, one of his courtiers, and with an appearance of great friendship took him round his garden, showing him all its beauties. When he had finished the circuit, he appealed to Astra-chan to know 'what his garden still lacked?' 'Nothing,' said the courtier;' it is quite perfect.' 'I think differently,' replied the king; 'I must decidedly plant a tree in it.' Astra-chan, who knew the king's meaning only too well, fell at his feet and begged his life, which he obtained only at the price of surrendering to the king the lady to whom he was betrothed."—Rawlinson, ii. 361, note.
5. See the woodcuts and note, Rawlinson, ii. 434.
6. The Behistun inscription gives the name as Gomates, and does not speak of two brothers. Mr Rawlinson seems to prove clearly that the revolution was a religious one, though nothing to that effect appears in Herodotus.—See his Essay, iii. 548.
7. 'Henry IV.,' Part 2, Act iv. sc. 4.