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Updated: June 16, 2025
At its left Bartja, whose hands were heavily fettered, Araspes, Darius, Zopyrus and Gyges. In the background stood some hundred officials and grandees.
Intaphernes, Aspathines, Gobryas, Hydarnes, the general Megabyzus, father of Zopyrus, the envoy Prexaspes, the noble Croesus, and the old warrior Araspes; in short, the flower of the ancient Persian aristocracy, were now at the court of Cambyses.
Listen, Bischen; if we really should be executed, go to the Magi, the Chaldwans, and Nebenchari the Egyptian, and tell them they had better not study the stars any longer, for that those very stars had proved themselves liars and deceivers to Darius." "Yes," interrupted Araspes, "I always said that dreams were the only real prophecies.
Araspes looked down thoughtfully, then shook himself, took a long draught from the wine-cup, and said, "I have my reasons, friends, but I cannot tell them now." "Tell them, tell them," was the answer. "No, children, I cannot, indeed I cannot. This cup I drain to the health of the charming Sappho, and this second to your good fortune, my favorite, Darius."
Araspes looked down thoughtfully, then shook himself, took a long draught from the wine-cup, and said, "I have my reasons, friends, but I cannot tell them now." "Tell them, tell them," was the answer. "No, children, I cannot, indeed I cannot. This cup I drain to the health of the charming Sappho, and this second to your good fortune, my favorite, Darius."
"Perhaps," said Darius, "I may be able to show a second and even a third wife by that time." "'Anahita' grant it!" exclaimed Zopyrus. "The Achaemenidae would soon become extinct, if every one were to follow such examples as Gyges and Araspes have set us. And your one wife, Bartja, is really not worth talking about.
Take care what you say, and consider well what punishment awaits perjurers." "We know that well enough," said Araspes, "and yet we are ready to swear by Mithras, that we have not left Bartja or his garden one moment since we came back from hunting."
They had scarcely left the room, when he sprang up and paced backwards and forwards like a madman, till the first crow of the sacred bird Parodar. When the sun had risen, he threw himself on his bed again, and fell into a sleep that was like a swoon. Meanwhile Bartja had written Sappho a farewell letter, and was sitting over the wine with his fellow-prisoners and their elder friend Araspes.
Cyrus, Araspes, Panthea, and forms of equal loftiness revived in him; he felt the spirit of Plato weaving within him; he felt that he needed that spirit to reproduce those pictures for himself and for others so much the more since he desired not so keenly to evoke poetic phantoms as, rather, to create a moral influence for actual beings.
If Araspes could see Sappho he would be obliged to confess that even Panthea had been outdone at last. Such a creature was never made before. Auramazda is an awful spendthrift; he might have made three beauties out of Sappho. And how charmingly it sounded when she said 'good-night' to us in Persian."
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