* According to Herodotus, eighty years later the battle- field used to be shown covered with bones, and it was said that the Egyptians could be distinguished from the Persians by the relative hardness of their skulls.

** Polysenus hands down a story that Cambyses, in order to paralyse the resistance of the besieged, caused cats, dogs, ibises, and other sacred animals to march at the head of his attacking columns:  the Egyptians would not venture to use their arms for fear of wounding or killing some of their gods.

The city held out for a considerable time; when at length she opened her gates, the remaining inhabitants of the Said who had hesitated up to then, hastened to make their submission, and the whole of Egypt as far as Philae became at one stroke a Persian province.  The Libyans did not wait to be summoned to bring their tribute; Cyrene and Barca followed their example, but their offerings were so small that the conqueror’s irritation was aroused, and deeming himself mocked, he gave way to his anger, and instead of accepting them, he threw them to his soldiers with his own hand (B.C. 525).*

     * The question as to the year in which Egypt was subdued by
     Cambyses has long divided historians:  I still agree with
     those who place the conquest in the spring of 525.

This sudden collapse of a power whose exalted position had defied all attacks for centuries, and the tragic fate of the king who had received his crown merely to lose it, filled contemporary beholders with astonishment and pity.  It was said that, ten days after the capitulation of Memphis, the victorious king desired out of sport to test the endurance of his prisoner.  Psammetichus beheld his daughter and the daughters of his nobles pass before him, half naked, with jars on their shoulders, and go down to the Nile to fetch water from the river like common slaves; his son and two thousand young men of the same age, in chains and with ropes round their necks, also defiled before him on their way to die as a revenge for the murder of the Mitylenians; yet he never for a moment lost his royal imperturbability.  But when one of his former companions in pleasure chanced to pass, begging for alms and clothed in rags, Psammetichus suddenly broke out into weeping, and lacerated his face in despair.  Cambyses, surprised at this excessive grief in a man who up till then had exhibited such fortitude, demanded the reason of his conduct.  “Son of Cyrus,” he replied, “the misfortunes of my house are too unparalleled to weep over, but not the affliction of my friend.  When a man, on the verge of old age, falls from luxury and abundance into extreme poverty, one may well lament his fate.”  When the speech was reported to Cambyses, he fully recognised the truth of it.  Croesus, who was also present, shed tears, and the Persians round him were moved with pity.  Cambyses, likewise touched, commanded that the son of the Pharaoh