Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 33
fessed submission, and, had Cambyses
been content
with such peaceful acquisitions, his future reign might
have been one of repose and prosperity. Cambyses,
however, inherited something of his father's grandeur of
character: to have left, therefore, Ethiopia and Carthage
unsubdued, seemed to him unchivalrous. He failed,
however, utterly in both of these schemes: in the
case of Carthage, the Phoenicians, as yet unsub-
dued by Persia, refused to fight against their kindred
colonies ; and, in the case of Lybia, one army sent
from Thebes against Ammon, perished in the desert,
while another, led by the king in person, failed to
force its way into Nubia. The only result was that
the Persians lost heart, while the Egyptians were
encouraged to resist, and that Cambyses at once saw
his error and his danger. The old king of Egypt, up to
this time well treated, was now seized and executed ;
while the native officers were apprehended and slain,
and a severity adopted wholly alien to the usual habits
of the Persians. The priests, as the natural leaders of
the people, were everywhere exposed to needless insult
and cruelty; Cambyses, it is said, setting the example
by stabbing the sacred calf, believed by all Egyptians
to be the incarnation of Apis. Egypt, "the basest of
the nations," tamely submitted, and made no furt ier
effort for many years to shake off the iron yoke of
the Persians, becoming thus, as Professor Rawlinson
observes, " the obsequious slave of Persia," and obey-
mandates she had not
ing, as it would seem cheerfully,
the spirit to resist.
But a new trouble was about to befall Cambyses, the
first springs of which were, as has been remarked, sug-