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Updated: June 6, 2025
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.
They did this once in the case of Croesus. Croesus, who was now a venerable man, advanced in years, had been for a long time the friend and faithful counselor of Cambyses's father. He had known Cambyses himself from his boyhood, and had been charged by his father to watch over him and counsel him, and aid him, on all occasions which might require it, with his experience and wisdom.
He shut himself up in the apartments of his palace at Susa, within the citadel, and never invited the Persian nobles to visit him there. Among the other means of luxury and pleasure which Smerdis found in the royal palaces, and which he appropriated to his own enjoyment, were Cambyses's wives.
Like other wicked men, he found, in the end, that the schemes of wickedness which he had malignantly aimed at the destruction of others, had been all the time slowly and surely working out his own. The people of Persia, therefore, were prepared by Cambyses's own acts to believe that the usurper Smerdis was really Cyrus's son, and, next to Cambyses, the heir to the throne.
He began with some small semblance of moderation, but he proceeded, in the end, to the perpetration of the most terrible excesses of violence and wrong. As to his moderation, his treatment of Psammenitus personally is almost the only instance that we can record. In the course of the war, Psammenitus and all his family fell into Cambyses's hands as captives.
Cambyses King of Persia, a Tragedy; acted at the Duke's Theatre, dedicated to Anne Duchess of Monmouth. This tragedy is written in heroic verse; the plot from Justin, lib. i. c. 9. Herodotus, &c. The Scene is in Suza, and Cambyses's camp near the walls of Suza.
Effect of Cambyses's measures. Opinion in regard to Smerdis. Acquiescence of the people. Dangerous situation of Smerdis. Arrangement with Patizithes. Smerdis lives in retirement. Special grounds of apprehension. Cambyses's wives. Smerdis appropriates them. Phædyma. Measures of Otanes. Otanes's communications with his daughter. Her replies. Phædyma discovers the deception.
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