"I'll begin with the king. As long as Phanes was in Babylon, he seemed
to forget his grief for Nitetis.

"The Athenian was never allowed to leave him. They were as inseparable as
Reksch and Rustem. Cambyses had no time to think of his sorrow, for
Phanes had always some new idea or other, and entertained us all, as well
as the king, marvellously. And we all liked him too; perhaps, because no
one could really envy him. Whenever he was alone, the tears came into
his eyes at the thought of his boy, and this made his great cheerfulness
--a cheerfulness which he always managed to impart to the king, Bartja,--
the more admirable. Every morning he went down to the Euphrates with
Cambyses and the rest of us, and enjoyed watching the sons of the
Achaemenidae at their exercises. When he saw them riding at full speed
past the sand-hills and shooting the pots placed on them into fragments
with their arrows, or throwing blocks of wood at one another and cleverly
evading the blows, he confessed that he could not imitate them in these
exercises, but at the same time he offered to accept a challenge from any
of us in throwing the spear and in wrestling. In his quick way he sprang
from his horse, stripped off his clothes--it was really a shame--and, to
the delight of the boys, threw their wrestling-master as if he had been a
feather.

[In the East, nudity was, even in those days, held to be
disgraceful, while the Greeks thought nothing so beautiful as the
naked human body. The Hetaira Phryne was summoned before the judges
for an offence against religion. Her defender, seeing that sentence
was about to be pronounced against his client, suddenly tore away
the garment which covered her bosom. The artifice was successful.
The judges pronounced her not guilty, being convinced that such