Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/72

 50 HISTOKY OF GREECE. persons deserted from Artaxerxes to Cyrus, none, except Orou tes, from Cyrus to Artaxerxes, has been remarked by Xenophon. Not merely throughout the march, but even as to the manner of fighting at Kunaxa, the judgment of Cyrus was sounder than that of Klearchus. The two matters of supreme importance to the Greeks, were, to take care of the person of Cyrus, and to strike straight at that of Artaxerxes with the central division around him. Now it was the fault of Klearchus, and not of Cyrus, that both these matters were omitted ; and that the Greeks gamed only a victory comparatively insignificant on the right. Yet in spite of such mistake, not his own, it appears that Cyrus would have been victorious, had he been able to repress that passionate burst of antipathy which drove him, like a madman, against his brother. The same insatiable ambition, and jealous fierceness when power was concerned, which had before led him to put to death two first cousins, because they omitted, in his presence, an a,ct of deference never paid except to the king in person, this same impulse, exasperated by the actual sight of his rival brother, and by that standing force of fraternal antipathy so frequent in regal families, 1 blinded him, for the moment, to all rational calculation. 1 Diodorus (xiv, 23) notices the legendary pair of hostile brothers, Eteo- kles and Polyneikes, as a parallel. Compare Tacitus, Annal. iv, 60. " Atrox Drusi ingenium, super cupidinem potentiae, et solita fratnbus odia, accende- batur invidia, quod mater Agrippina promptior Neroni erat," etc.; and Jus- tin, xlii, 4. Compare also the interesting narrative of M. Prosper Merimce, in his life of Don Pedro of Castile ; a prince commonly known by the name of Peter the Cruel. Don Pedro was dethroned, and slain in personal conflict, by the hand of his bastard brother, Henri of Trans'iamare. At the battle of Navarrete, in 1367, says M. Merimee, "Don PeMre, pui, pendant le combat, s'etait jete au plus fort de la melee, s'acharna long temp? a la poursuite des fuyards. On le voyait galoper dans la plaine, monte su un cheval noir, sa banniere armoriee de Castillo devant lui, cherchant so frere partout oil Ton combattait encore, et criant, e'chauffe' par le carnage 'Quest ce Mtard, qui se nomme roi de Castille?'" (Histoire de Do* Pe'dre, p. 504.) Ultimately Don Pedro, blocked up and almost starved out in the castle of Montiel, was entrapped by simulated negotiations into the power of his enemies. He was slain in personal conflict by the dagger of his brothef Henri, after a desperate struggle, in which he seemed likely to prevail, if Henri had not been partially aided by a bystander.