THE END OF CAMBYSES.
B.C. 523-522
Cambyses's profligate conduct.--He marries his own
sisters.--Consultation of the Persian judges.--Their
opinion.--Smerdis.--Jealousy of Cambyses.--The two magi.--Cambyses
suspicious.--He plans an invasion of Ethiopia.--Island of
Elephantine.--The Icthyophagi.--Classes of savage nations.--Embassadors
sent to Ethiopia.--The presents.--The Ethiopian king detects the
imposture.--The Ethiopian king's opinion of Cambyses's presents.--The
Ethiopian bow.--Return of the Icthyophagi.--Jealousy of Cambyses.--He
orders Smerdis to be murdered.--Cambyses grows more cruel.--Twelve
noblemen buried alive.--Cambyses's cruelty to his sister.--Her
death.--The venerable Croesus.--His advice to Cambyses.--Cambyses's
rage at Croesus.--He attempts to kill him.--The declaration of the
oracle.--Ecbatane, Susa, and Babylon.--Cambyses returns
northward.--He enters Syria.--A herald proclaims Smerdis.--The herald
seized.--Probable explanation.--Rage of Cambyses.--Cambyses mortally
wounded.--His remorse and despair.--Cambyses calls his nobles about
him.--His dying declaration.--Death of Cambyses.--His dying declaration
discredited.
Among the other acts of profligate wickedness which have blackened
indelibly and forever Cambyses's name, he married two of his own
sisters, and brought one of them with him to Egypt as his wife. The
natural instincts of all men, except those whose early life has been
given up to the most shameless and dissolute habits of vice, are
sufficient to preserve them from such crimes as these. Cambyses
himself felt, it seems, some misgivings when contemplating the first
of these marriages; and he sent to a certain council of judges, whose
province it was to interpret the laws, asking them their opinion of
the rightfulness of such a marriage. Kings ask the opinion of their
legal advisers in such cases, not because they really wish to know
whether the act in question is right or wrong, but because, having
themselves determined upon the performance of it, they wish their
counselors to give it a sort of legal sanction, in order to justify
the deed, and diminish the popular odium which it might otherwise
incur.
The Persian judges whom Cambyses consulted on this occasion understood
very well what was expected of them. After a grave deliberation, they
returned answer to the king that, though they could find no law
allowing a man to marry his sister, they found many which authorized a
king of Persia to do whatever he thought best. Cambyses accordingly
carried his plan into execution. He married first the older sister,
whose name was Atossa. Atossa became subsequently a personage of great
historical distinction. The daughter of Cyrus, the wife of Darius, and
the mother of Xerxes, she was the link that bound together the three
most magnificent potentates of the whole Eastern world. How far these
sisters were willing participators in the guilt of their incestuous
marriages we can not now know. The one who went with Cambyses into
Egypt was of a humane, and gentle, and timid disposition, being in
these respects wholly unlike her brother; and it may be that she
merely yielded, in the transaction of her marriage, to her brother's
arbitrary and imperious will.
Besides this sister, Cambyses had brought his brother Smerdis with
him into Egypt. Smerdis was younger than Cambyses, but he was superior
to him in strength and personal accomplishments. Cambyses was very
jealous of this superiority. He did not dare to leave his brother in
Persia, to manage the government in his stead during his absence, lest
he should take advantage of the temporary power thus committed to his
hands, and usurp the throne altogether. He decided, therefore, to
bring Smerdis with him into Egypt, and to leave the government of the
state in the hands of a regency composed of two _magi_. These magi
were public officers of distinction, but, having no hereditary claims
to the crown, Cambyses thought there would be little danger of their
attempting to usurp it. It happened, however, that the name of one of
these magi was Smerdis. This coincidence between the magian's name and
that of the prince led, in the end, as will presently be seen, to very
important consequences.
The uneasiness and jealousy which Cambyses felt in respect to his
brother was not wholly allayed by the arrangement which he thus made
for keeping him in his army, and so under his own personal observation
and command. Smerdis evinced, on various occasions, so much strength
and skill, that Cambyses feared his influence among the officers and
soldiers, and was rendered continually watchful, suspicious, and
afraid. A circumstance at last occurred which excited his jealousy
more than ever, and he determined to send Smerdis home again to
Persia. The circumstance was this:
After Cambyses had succeeded in obtaining full possession of Egypt, he
formed, among his other wild and desperate schemes, the design of
invading the territories of a nation of Ethiopians who lived in the
interior of Africa, around and beyond the sources of the Nile. The
Ethiopians were celebrated for their savage strength and bravery.
Cambyses wished to obtain information respecting them and their
country before setting out on his expedition against them, and he
determined to send spies into their country to obtain it. But, as
Ethiopia was a territory so remote, and as its institutions and
customs, and the language, the dress, and the manners of its
inhabitants were totally different from those of all the other nations
of the earth, and were almost wholly unknown to the Persian army, it
was impossible to send Persians in disguise, with any hope that they
could enter and explore the country without being discovered. It was
very doubtful, in fact, whether, if such spies were to be sent, they
could succeed in reaching Ethiopia at all.
Now there was, far up the Nile, near the cataracts, at a place where
the river widens and forms a sort of bay, a large and fertile island
called Elephantine, which was inhabited by a half-savage tribe called
the Icthyophagi. They lived mainly by fishing on the river, and,
consequently, they had many boats, and were accustomed to make long
excursions up and down the stream. Their name was, in fact, derived
from their occupation. It was a Greek word, and might be translated
"Fishermen."[B] The manners and customs of half-civilized or savage
nations depend entirely, of course, upon the modes in which they
procure their subsistence. Some depend on hunting wild beasts, some on
rearing flocks and herds of tame animals, some on cultivating the
ground, and some on fishing in rivers or in the sea. These four
different modes of procuring food result in as many totally diverse
modes of life: it is a curious fact, however, that while a nation of
hunters differs very essentially from a nation of herdsmen or of
fishermen, though they may live, perhaps, in the same neighborhood
with them, still, all nations of hunters, however widely they may be
separated in geographical position, very strongly resemble one another
in character, in customs, in institutions, and in all the usages of
life. It is so, moreover, with all the other types of national
constitution mentioned above. The Greeks observed these
characteristics of the various savage tribes with which they became
acquainted, and whenever they met with a tribe that lived by fishing,
they called them Icthyophagi.
[Footnote B: Literally, _fish-eaters_.]
Cambyses sent to the Icthyophagi of the island of Elephantine,
requiring them to furnish him with a number of persons acquainted with
the route to Ethiopia and with the Ethiopian language, that he might
send them as an embassy. He also provided some presents to be sent as
a token of friendship to the Ethiopian king. The presents were,
however, only a pretext, to enable the embassadors, who were, in fact,
spies, to go to the capital and court of the Ethiopian monarch in
safety, and bring back to Cambyses all the information which they
should be able to obtain.
The presents consisted of such toys and ornaments as they thought
would most please the fancy of a savage king. There were some purple
vestments of a very rich and splendid dye, and a golden chain for the
neck, golden bracelets for the wrists, an alabaster box of very
precious perfumes, and other similar trinkets and toys. There was also
a large vessel filled with wine.
The Icthyophagi took these presents, and set out on their expedition.
After a long and toilsome voyage and journey, they came to the country
of the Ethiopians, and delivered their presents, together with the
message which Cambyses had intrusted to them. The presents, they said,
had been sent by Cambyses as a token of his desire to become the
friend and ally of the Ethiopian king.
The king, instead of being deceived by this hypocrisy, detected the
imposture at once. He knew very well, he said, what was the motive of
Cambyses in sending such an embassage to him, and he should advise
Cambyses to be content with his own dominions, instead of planning
aggressions of violence, and schemes and stratagems of deceit against
his neighbors, in order to get possession of theirs. He then began to
look at the presents which the embassadors had brought, which,
however, he appeared very soon to despise. The purple vest first
attracted his attention. He asked whether that was the true, natural
color of the stuff, or a false one. The messengers told him that the
linen was dyed, and began to explain the process to him. The mind of
the savage potentate, however, instead of being impressed, as the
messengers supposed he would have been through their description, with
a high idea of the excellence and superiority of Persian art, only
despised the false show of what he considered an artificial and
fictitious beauty. "The beauty of Cambyses's dresses," said he, "is as
deceitful, it seems, as the fair show of his professions of
friendship." As to the golden bracelets and necklaces, the king looked
upon them with contempt. He thought that they were intended for
fetters and chains, and said that, however well they might answer
among the effeminate Persians, they were wholly insufficient to
confine such sinews as he had to deal with. The wine, however, he
liked. He drank it with great pleasure, and told the Icthyophagi that
it was the only article among all their presents that was worth
receiving.
In return for the presents which Cambyses had sent him, the King of
the Ethiopians, who was a man of prodigious size and strength, took
down his bow and gave it to the Icthyophagi, telling them to carry it
to Cambyses as a token of his defiance, and to ask him to see if he
could find a man in all his army who could bend it. "Tell Cambyses,"
he added, "that when his soldiers are able to bend such bows as that,
it will be time for him to think of invading the territories of the
Ethiopians; and that, in the mean time, he ought to consider himself
very fortunate that the Ethiopians were not grasping and ambitious
enough to attempt the invasion of his."
When the Icthyophagi returned to Cambyses with this message, the
strongest men in the Persian camp were of course greatly interested in
examining and trying the bow. Smerdis was the only one that could be
found who was strong enough to bend it; and he, by the superiority to
the others which he thus evinced, gained great renown. Cambyses was
filled with jealousy and anger. He determined to send Smerdis back
again to Persia. "It will be better," thought he to himself, "to incur
whatever danger there may be of his exciting revolt at home, than to
have him present in my court, subjecting me to continual mortification
and chagrin by the perpetual parade of his superiority."
His mind was, however, not at ease after his brother had gone.
Jealousy and suspicion in respect to Smerdis perplexed his waking
thoughts and troubled his dreams. At length, one night, he thought he
saw Smerdis seated on a royal throne in Persia, his form expanded
supernaturally to such a prodigious size that he touched the heavens
with his head. The next day, Cambyses, supposing that the dream
portended danger that Smerdis would be one day in possession of the
throne, determined to put a final and perpetual end to all these
troubles and fears, and he sent for an officer of his court,
Prexaspes--the same whose son he shot through the heart with an arrow,
as described in the last chapter--and commanded him to proceed
immediately to Persia, and there to find Smerdis, and kill him. The
murder of Prexaspes's son, though related in the last chapter as an
illustration of Cambyses's character, did not actually take place till
after Prexaspes returned from this expedition.
Prexaspes went to Persia, and executed the orders of the king by the
assassination of Smerdis. There are different accounts of the mode
which he adopted for accomplishing his purpose. One is, that he
contrived some way to drown him in the sea; another, that he poisoned
him; and a third, that he killed him in the forests, when he was out
on a hunting excursion. At all events, the deed was done, and
Prexaspes went back to Cambyses, and reported to him that he had
nothing further to fear from his brother's ambition.
In the mean time, Cambyses went on from bad to worse in his
government, growing every day more despotic and tyrannical, and
abandoning himself to fits of cruelty and passion which became more
and more excessive and insane. At one time, on some slight
provocation, he ordered twelve distinguished noblemen of his court to
be buried alive. It is astonishing that there can be institutions and
arrangements in the social state which will give one man such an
ascendency over others that such commands can be obeyed. On another
occasion, Cambyses's sister and wife, who had mourned the death of her
brother Smerdis, ventured a reproach to Cambyses for having destroyed
him. She was sitting at table, with some plant or flower in her hand,
which she slowly picked to pieces, putting the fragments on the table.
She asked Cambyses whether he thought the flower looked fairest and
best in fragments, or in its original and natural integrity. "It
looked best, certainly," Cambyses said, "when it was whole." "And
yet," said she, "you have begun to take to pieces and destroy our
family, as I have destroyed this flower." Cambyses sprang upon his
unhappy sister, on hearing this reproof, with the ferocity of a tiger.
He threw her down and leaped upon her. The attendants succeeded in
rescuing her and bearing her away; but she had received a fatal
injury. She fell immediately into a premature and unnatural sickness,
and died.
These fits of sudden and terrible passion to which Cambyses was
subject, were often followed, when they had passed by, as is usual in
such cases, with remorse and misery; and sometimes the officers of
Cambyses, anticipating a change in their master's feelings, did not
execute his cruel orders, but concealed the object of his blind and
insensate vengeance until the paroxysm was over. They did this once in
the case of Croesus. Croesus, who was now a venerable man,
advanced in years, had been for a long time the friend and faithful
counselor of Cambyses's father. He had known Cambyses himself from
his boyhood, and had been charged by his father to watch over him and
counsel him, and aid him, on all occasions which might require it,
with his experience and wisdom. Cambyses, too, had been solemnly
charged by his father Cyrus, at the last interview that he had with
him before his death, to guard and protect Croesus, as his father's
ancient and faithful friend, and to treat him, as long as he lived,
with the highest consideration and honor.
Under these circumstances, Croesus considered himself justified in
remonstrating one day with Cambyses against his excesses and his
cruelty. He told him that he ought not to give himself up to the
control of such violent and impetuous passions; that, though his
Persian soldiers and subjects had borne with him thus far, he might,
by excessive oppression and cruelty, exhaust their forbearance and
provoke them to revolt against him, and that thus he might suddenly
lose his power, through his intemperate and inconsiderate use of it.
Croesus apologized for offering these counsels, saying that he felt
bound to warn Cambyses of his danger, in obedience to the injunctions
of Cyrus, his father.
Cambyses fell into a violent passion at hearing these words. He told
Croesus that he was amazed at his presumption in daring to offer him
advice, and then began to load his venerable counselor with the
bitterest invectives and reproaches. He taunted him with his own
misfortunes, in losing, as he had done, years before, his own kingdom
of Lydia, and then accused him of having been the means, through his
foolish counsels, of leading his father, Cyrus, into the worst of the
difficulties which befell him toward the close of his life. At last,
becoming more and more enraged by the reaction upon himself of his own
angry utterance, he told Croesus that he had hated him for a long
time, and for a long time had wished to punish him; "and now," said
he, "you have given me an opportunity." So saying, he seized his bow,
and began to fit an arrow to the string. Croesus fled. Cambyses
ordered his attendants to pursue him, and when they had taken him, to
kill him. The officers knew that Cambyses would regret his rash and
reckless command as soon as his anger should have subsided, and so,
instead of slaying Croesus, they concealed him. A few days after,
when the tyrant began to express his remorse and sorrow at having
destroyed his venerable friend in the heat of passion, and to mourn
his death, they told him that Croesus was still alive. They had
ventured, they said, to save him, till they could ascertain whether it
was the king's real and deliberate determination that he must die. The
king was overjoyed to find Croesus still alive, but he would not
forgive those who had been instrumental in saving him. He ordered
every one of them to be executed.
Cambyses was the more reckless and desperate in these tyrannical
cruelties because he believed that he possessed a sort of charmed
life. He had consulted an oracle, it seems, in Media, in respect to
his prospects of life, and the oracle had informed him that he would
die at Ecbatane. Now Ecbatane was one of the three great capitals of
his empire, Susa and Babylon being the others. Ecbatane was the most
northerly of these cities, and the most remote from danger. Babylon
and Susa were the points where the great transactions of government
chiefly centered, while Ecbatane was more particularly the private
residence of the kings. It was their refuge in danger, their retreat
in sickness and age. In a word, Susa was their seat of government,
Babylon their great commercial emporium, but Ecbatane was their home.
And thus as the oracle, when Cambyses inquired in respect to the
circumstances of his death, had said that it was decreed by the fates
that he should die at Ecbatane, it meant, as he supposed, that he
should die in peace, in his bed, at the close of the usual period
allotted to the life of man. Considering thus that the fates had
removed all danger of a sudden and violent death from his path, he
abandoned himself to his career of vice and folly, remembering only
the substance of the oracle, while the particular form of words in
which it was expressed passed from his mind.
At length Cambyses, after completing his conquests in Egypt, returned
to the northward along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, until he
came into Syria. The province of Galilee, so often mentioned in the
sacred Scriptures, was a part of Syria. In traversing Galilee at the
head of the detachment of troops that was accompanying him, Cambyses
came, one day, to a small town, and encamped there. The town itself
was of so little importance that Cambyses did not, at the time of his
arriving at it, even know its name. His encampment at the place,
however, was marked by a very memorable event, namely, he met with a
herald here, who was traveling through Syria, saying that he had been
sent from Susa to proclaim to the people of Syria that Smerdis, the
son of Cyrus, had assumed the throne, and to enjoin upon them all to
obey no orders except such as should come from him!
Cambyses had supposed that Smerdis was dead. Prexaspes, when he had
returned from Susa, had reported that he had killed him. He now,
however, sent for Prexaspes, and demanded of him what this
proclamation could mean. Prexaspes renewed, and insisted upon, his
declaration that Smerdis was dead. He had destroyed him with his own
hands, and had seen him buried. "If the dead can rise from the grave,"
added Prexaspes, "then Smerdis may perhaps, raise a revolt and appear
against you; but not otherwise."
Prexaspes then recommended that the king should send and seize the
herald, and inquire particularly of him in respect to the government
in whose name he was acting. Cambyses did so. The herald was taken and
brought before the king. On being questioned whether it was true that
Smerdis had really assumed the government and commissioned him to make
proclamation of the fact, he replied that it was so. He had not seen
Smerdis himself, he said, for he kept himself shut up very closely in
his palace; but he was informed of his accession by one of the magians
whom Cambyses had left in command. It was by him, he said, that he had
been commissioned to proclaim Smerdis as king.
Prexaspes then said that he had no doubt that the two magians whom
Cambyses had left in charge of the government had contrived to seize
the throne. He reminded Cambyses that the name of one of them was
Smerdis, and that probably that was the Smerdis who was usurping the
supreme command. Cambyses said that he was convinced that this
supposition was true. His dream, in which he had seen a vision of
Smerdis, with his head reaching to the heavens, referred, he had no
doubt, to the magian Smerdis, and not to his brother. He began
bitterly to reproach himself for having caused his innocent brother to
be put to death; but the remorse which he thus felt for his crime, in
assassinating an imaginary rival, soon gave way to rage and resentment
against the real usurper. He called for his horse, and began to mount
him in hot haste, to give immediate orders, and make immediate
preparations for marching to Susa.
As he bounded into the saddle, with his mind in this state of
reckless desperation, the sheath, by some accident or by some
carelessness caused by his headlong haste, fell from his sword, and
the naked point of the weapon pierced his thigh. The attendants took
him from his horse, and conveyed him again to his tent. The wound, on
examination, proved to be a very dangerous one, and the strong
passions, the vexation, the disappointment, the impotent rage, which
were agitating the mind of the patient, exerted an influence extremely
unfavorable to recovery. Cambyses, terrified at the prospect of death,
asked what was the name of the town where he was lying. They told him
it was Ecbatane.
He had never thought before of the possibility that there might be
some other Ecbatane besides his splendid royal retreat in Media; but
now, when he learned that was the name of the place where he was then
encamped, he felt sure that his hour was come, and he was overwhelmed
with remorse and despair.
He suffered, too, inconceivable pain and anguish from his wound. The
sword had pierced to the bone, and the inflammation which had
supervened was of the worst character. After some days, the acuteness
of the agony which he at first endured passed gradually away, though
the extent of the injury resulting from the wound was growing every
day greater and more hopeless. The sufferer lay, pale, emaciated, and
wretched, on his couch, his mind, in every interval of bodily agony,
filling up the void with the more dreadful sufferings of horror and
despair.
At length, on the twentieth day after his wound had been received, he
called the leading nobles of his court and officers of his army about
his bedside, and said to them that he was about to die, and that he
was compelled, by the calamity which had befallen him, to declare to
them what he would otherwise have continued to keep concealed. The
person who had usurped the throne under the name of Smerdis, he now
said, was not, and could not be, his brother Smerdis, the son of
Cyrus. He then proceeded to give them an account of the manner in
which his fears in respect to his brother had been excited by his
dream, and of the desperate remedy that he had resorted to in ordering
him to be killed. He believed, he said, that the usurper was Smerdis
the magian, whom he had left as one of the regents when he set out on
his Egyptian campaign. He urged them, therefore, not to submit to his
sway, but to go back to Media, and if they could not conquer him and
put him down by open war, to destroy him by deceit and stratagem, or
in any way whatever by which the end could be accomplished. Cambyses
urged this with so much of the spirit of hatred and revenge beaming in
his hollow and glassy eye as to show that sickness, pain, and the
approach of death, which had made so total a change in the wretched
sufferer's outward condition, had altered nothing within.
Very soon after making this communication to his nobles, Cambyses
expired.
It will well illustrate the estimate which those who knew him best,
formed of this great hero's character, to state, that those who heard
this solemn declaration did not believe one word of it from beginning
to end. They supposed that the whole story which the dying tyrant had
told them, although he had scarcely breath enough left to tell it, was
a fabrication, dictated by his fraternal jealousy and hate. They
believed that it was really the true Smerdis who had been proclaimed
king, and that Cambyses had invented, in his dying moments, the story
of his having killed him, in order to prevent the Persians from
submitting peaceably to his reign.