Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/445

 ARTAXERXES. 437 mutual assaults and conflicts between him and his brother, he, giving and receiving a blow, was him- self indeed wounded, but that the other lost his life. And, therefore, he decreed that Mithridates should be put to death in boats ; which execution is after the fol- lowing manner : Taking two boats framed exactlj^ to fit and answer each other, they lay do'vTi in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back ; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, they offer him food, and if he refuse to eat it, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes ; then, after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey, pouring it not only into his mouth, but all over his face. They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered uji and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed. When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures pre3'ing upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, at last expired. Masabates, the king's eunuch, who had cut off the hand and head of Cyrus, remained still as a mark for Parysatis's vengeance. Whereas, therefore, he was so circumspect, that he gave her no advantage against him, she framed this kind of snare for him. She was a very ingenious woman in other ways, and was an excellent player at dice, and, before the war, had often played with the king. After the war, too, when she had been recon-