“Oh! how I should like to visit your home!” exclaimed Atossa.  “It must be quite, quite different from Persia and everything else that I have seen yet.  The fruitful shores of your great river, larger even than the Euphrates, the temples with their painted columns, those huge artificial mountains, the Pyramids, where the ancient kings be buried—­it must all be wonderfully beautiful.  But what pleases me best of all is your description of the entertainments, where men and women converse together as they like.  The only meals we are allowed to take in the society of men are on New Year’s Day and the king’s birthday, and then we are forbidden to speak; indeed it is not thought right for us even to raise our eyes.  How different it is with you!  By Mithras! mother, I should like to be an Egyptian, for we poor creatures are in reality nothing but miserable slaves; and yet I feel that the great Cyrus was my father too, and that I am worth quite as much as most men.  Do I not speak the truth? can I not obey as well as command? have I not the same thirst and longing for glory? could not I learn to ride, to string a bow, to fight and swim, if I were taught and inured to such exercises?”

The girl had sprung from her seat while speaking, her eyes flashed and she swung her spindle in the air, quite unconscious that in so doing she was breaking the thread and entangling the flax.

“Remember what is fitting,” reminded Kassandane.  “A woman must submit with humility to her quiet destiny, and not aspire to imitate the deeds of men.”

“But there are women who lead the same lives as men,” cried Atossa.  “There are the Amazons who live on the shores of the Thermodon in Themiscyra, and at Comana on the Iris; they have waged great wars, and even to this day wear men’s armor.”

“Who told you this?”

“My old nurse, Stephanion, whom my father brought a captive from Sinope to Pasargadae.”

“But I can teach you better,” said Nitetis.  “It is true that in Themiscyra and Comana there are a number of women who wear soldier’s armor; but they are only priestesses, and clothe themselves like the warlike goddess they serve, in order to present to the worshippers a manifestation of the divinity in human form.  Croesus says that an army of Amazons has never existed, but that the Greeks, (always ready and able to turn anything into a beautiful myth), having seen these priestesses, at once transformed the armed virgins dedicated to the goddess into a nation of fighting women.”

“Then they are liars!” exclaimed the disappointed girl.

“It is true, that the Greeks have not the same reverence for truth as you have,” answered Nitetis, “but they do not call the men who invent these beautiful stories liars; they are called poets.”

“Just as it is with ourselves,” said Kassandane.  “The poets, who sing the praises of my husband, have altered and adorned his early life in a marvellous manner; yet no one calls them liars.  But tell me, my daughter, is it true that these Greeks are more beautiful than other men, and understand art better even than the Egyptians?”