naked too is a great help.  If it were not so indecent, we ought always to wrestle stripped, and anoint our skins, as the Greeks do, with the olive-oil.  He beat us too in throwing the spear, but the king, who you know is proud of being the best archer in Persia, sent his arrow farther.  Phanes was especially pleased with our rule, that in a wrestling-match the one who is thrown must kiss the hand of his victor.  At last he showed us a new exercise:—­boxing.  He refused, however, to try his skill on any one but a slave, so Cambyses sent for the biggest and strongest man among the servants—­my groom, Bessus—­a giant who can bring the hind legs of a horse together and hold them so firmly that the creature trembles all over and cannot stir.  This big fellow, taller by a head than Phanes, shrugged his shoulders contemptuously on hearing that he was to box with the little foreign gentleman.  He felt quite sure of victory, placed himself opposite his adversary, and dealt him a blow heavy enough to kill an elephant.  Phanes avoided it cleverly, in the same moment hitting the giant with his naked fist so powerfully under the eyes, that the blood streamed from his nose and mouth, and the huge, uncouth fellow fell on the ground with a yell.  When they picked him up his face looked like a pumpkin of a greenish-blue color.  The boys shouted with delight at his discomfiture; but we admired the dexterity of this Greek, and were especially glad to see the king in such good spirits; we noticed this most when Phanes was singing Greek songs and dance-melodies to him accompanied by the lute.

“Meanwhile Kassandane’s blindness had been cured, and this of course tended not a little to disperse the king’s melancholy.

“In short it was a very pleasant time, and I was just going to ask for Atossa’s hand in marriage, when Phanes went off to Arabia, and everything was changed.

“No sooner had he turned his back on the gates of Babylon than all the evil Divs seemed to have entered into the king.  He went about, a moody, silent man, speaking to no one; and to drown his melancholy would begin drinking, even at an early hour in the morning, quantities of the strongest Syrian wine.  By the evening he was generally so intoxicated that he had to be carried out of the hall, and would wake up the next morning with headache and spasms.  In the day-time he would wander about as if looking for something, and in the night they often heard him calling Nitetis.  The physicians became very anxious about his health, but when they sent him medicine he threw it away.  It was quite right of Croesus to say, as he did once ’Ye Magi and Chaldaeans! before trying to cure a sick man we must discover the seat of his disease.  Do you know it in this case?  No?  Then I will tell you what ails the king.  He has an internal complaint and a wound.  The former is called ennui, and the latter is in his heart.  The Athenian is a good remedy for the first, but for the second I know of none; such wounds either scar over of themselves, or the patient bleeds to death inwardly.’”