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These few days of grief had worked a great change in a man so unaccustomed to suffering as Cambyses. His face was pale, his raven-black hair and beard had grown grey, and the consciousness of victory which usually shone in his eyes was dimmed.
He fancied it was a proof that Bartja had been trying to gain favor with the people, and Cambyses would perhaps have shown his displeasure by some open act, if a better impulse had not told him that he, not Bartja, was the brother who stood in need of forgiveness.
Cambyses arrived at the city where Apis was kept at a time when the priests were celebrating some sacred occasion with festivities and rejoicings.
Herodotus narrates, that, when Cambyses sent ambassadors to the Macrobians, they asked what the Persians had to eat and how long they commonly lived. He was told that they sometimes attained the age of eighty, and that they ate a mass of crushed grain, which they termed bread.
The art of true wisdom is to keep within limits." "Oh, if Cambyses could only hear you!" exclaimed Croesus. "Instead of being contented with his immense conquests, and now thinking for the welfare of his subjects, he has all sorts of distant plans in his head.
The girl's knees trembled so violently that she could hardly stand, and her fear entirely took away the power of speaking. "I have not much patience," exclaimed Cambyses. Mandane started, grew paler still, but could not speak. Then Phanes came forward and asked the angry king to allow him to examine the girl, as he felt sure that fear alone had closed her lips and that a kind word would open them.
Cambyses felt that he hated Bartja, and his fist clenched involuntarily as he saw the young hero looking so happy in the consciousness of his own well-earned success. Phanes had been wounded and went to his tent; Aristomachus lay near him, dying. "The oracle has deceived me, after all," he murmured. "I shall die without seeing my country again." "The oracle spoke the truth," answered Phanes.
The Libyans of the desert tract which borders the Nile valley to the west, and even the Greeks of the more remote Barca and Cyrene, sent gifts to the conqueror and consented to become his tributaries. But Cambyses placed little value on such petty accessions to his power.
Until this was done, the unfortunate women were shut up in close seclusion on the death of their lord, like mourners who retire from the world when suffering any great and severe bereavement. The wives of Cambyses were appropriated by Smerdis to himself on his taking possession of the throne and hearing of Cambyses's death.
He then hurried to the harem, to make sure that the king's wives should look their best, and insisted upon Phædime painting her face white, and putting on a simple, dark dress without ornament, except the chain given her by Cambyses on her marriage, to arouse the pity of the Achæmenidæ, to which family she herself belonged. The eunuch's cunning scheme succeeded but too well.
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