Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/259

Rh quered several of the neighboring islands, and even some towns on the mainland ; he carried on successful war against Miletus; and signally defeated the Lesbian ships which came to assist Miletus ; he got together a force of one hundred armed ships called pentekonters, and one thousand mercenary bowmen,— aspiring to nothing less than the dominion of Ionia, with the islands in the .Ægean. Alike terrible to friend and foe by his indiscriminate spirit of aggression, he acquired a naval power which seems at that time to have been the greatest in the Grecian world. He had been in ulitmae alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, who, however, ultimately broke with him. Considering his behavior towards allies, such rupture is not at all surprising; but Herodotus ascribes it to the alarm which Amasis conceived at the uninterrupted and superhuman good fortune of Poly- krates, a degree of good fortune sure to draw down ultimately corresponding intensity of suffering from the hands of the en- vious gods. Indeed, Herodotus, deeply penetrated with this belief in an ever-present nemesis, which allows no man to be very happy, or long happy, with impunity, throws it into the form of an epistolaiy warning from Amasis to Polykrates, ad- vising him to inflict upon himself some seasonable mischief or suffering ; in order, if possible, to avert the ultimate judgment, to let blood in time, so that the plethora of happiness might not end in apoplexy Pursuant to such counsel, Polykrates threw into the sea a favorite ring, of matchless price and beauty ; but unfortunately, in a few days, the ring reappeared in the belly of a fine fish, which a fisherman had sent to him as a present. Amasis now foresaw that the final apoplexy was inevitable, and broke off the alliance with Polykrates without delay, a well- known story, interesting as evidence of ancient belief, and not less to be noted as showing the power of that belief to beget fictitious details out of real characters, such as I have already touched upon in the history of Solon and Croesus, and else- where. VOL, iv.