Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/240

 222 HISTORY OF GREECE. Susa secretly a confidential Persian, Prexaspes, with express or ders to get rid of his brother. Prexaspes fulfilled his commis- sion effectively, burying the slain prince with his own hands, 1 and keeping the deed concealed from all except a few of the chiefs at the regal residence. Among these few chiefs, however, there was one, the Median Patizeithes, belonging to the order of the Magi, who saw in it a ronvenient stepping-stone for his own personal ambition, and made use of it as a means of covertly supplanting the dynasty of the great Cyrus. Enjoying the full confidence of Knmbyses, he had been left by that prince, on departing for Egypt, in the entire management of the palace and treasures, with extensive authority. 2 Moreover, he happened to have a brother extremely resembling in person the deceased Smerdis ; and as the open and dangerous madness of Kambyses contributed to alienate from him the minds of the Persians, he resolved to proclaim this brother king in his room, as if it were the younger son of Cyrus succeeding to the disqualified elder. On one important point, the false Smerdis differed from the true. He had lost his ears, which Cyrus himself had caused to be cut off for an offence ; but the personal resemblance, after all, was of little importance, since he was seldom or never allowed to show himself to the people. 3 Kambyses, having heard of this revolt in Syria on his return from Egypt, was mounting his horse in haste for the pur- pose of going to suppress it, when an accident from his sword put an end to his life. Herodotus tells us that, before his death, he summoned the Persians around him, confessed that he had been guilty of putting his brother to death, and apprized them that the reigning Smerdis was only a Median pretender, con- juring them at the same time not to submit to the disgrace of be- ing ruled by any other than a Persian and an Achaemenid. But if it be true that he ever made known the facts, no one believed him. For Prexaspes, on his part, was compelled by regard to his own safety, to deny that he had imbrued his hands in the blood 1 Herodot. iii, 30-62. * Herodot. iii, 61-63. 3 Herodot. iii, 68-69. "Aurihus decisis vivere jubet," says Tacitua, about a case under the Parthian government (Annal. xii, 14), nor have the Turkish authorities given up the infliction of it at the present m cinent, w at least down to a very recent period.