Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/449

 ARTAXERXES. 441 that they suppose the little creature lives upon air and dew. It is called rhyntaces. Ctesias affirms, that Pary- patis, cutting a bird of this kind into two pieces with a knife, one side of which had been smeared with the drug, the other side being clear of it, ate the untouched and wholesome part herself, and gave Statira that which was thus infected ; but Diuon will not have it to be Parysatis, but Melantas, that cut up the bird and presented the en- venomed part of it to 'Statira ; who, dying with dreadful agonies and convulsions, was herself sensible of what had happened to her, and aroused in the king's mind suspi- cion of his mother, whose savage and implacable temper he knew. And therefore proceeding instantly to an in- quest, he seized upon his mother's domestic servants that attended at her table, and put them upon the rack. Parysatis kept Gigis at home with her a long time, and, though the king commanded her, she would not produce her. But she, at last, herself desiring that she might be dismissed to her own home by night, Artaxerxes had intimation of it, and, lying in wait for her, hurried her awaj', and adjudged her to death. Now poisoners in Per- sia suffer thus by law. There is a broad stone, on which they place the head of the culprit, and then with another stone beat and press it, untU the face and the head itself are all pounded to pieces ; which was the punishment Gigis lost her life by. But to his mother, Artaxerxes neither said nor did any other hurt, save that he banished and confined her, not much against her will, to Babylon, protesting that while she lived he would not come near that city. Such was the condition of the king's affiiirs in his own house. But when all his attempts to capture the Greeks that had come up with Cyrus, though he desired to do so no less than he had desired to overcome Cyrus and maintam his throne, proved unsuccessful, and they,