This idea, which he confided to every one about him as a great secret,
pursued him day and night and gave him no rest, until he had started for
Ethiopia with an immense host. He was forced, however, to return without
having accomplished his object, after having miserably lost the greater
part of his army by heat and the scarcity of provisions. An historian,
who may almost be spoken of as contemporary, tells us that the wretched
soldiers, after having subsisted on herbs as long as they could, came to
deserts where there was no sign of vegetation, and in their despair
resorted to an expedient almost too fearful to describe. Lots were drawn
by every ten men, and he on whom the lot fell was killed and eaten by the
other nine.

[Herodotus visited Egypt some 60 years after the death of Cambyses,
454 B.C. He describes the Ethiopian campaign, III. 25.]

At last things went so far, that his subjects compelled this madman to
return, but only, with their slavish Asiatic feelings, to obey him all
the more blindly, when they found themselves once more in inhabited
regions.

On reaching Memphis with the wreck of his army, he found the Egyptians in
glorious apparel celebrating a festival. They had found a new Apis and
were rejoicing over the reappearance of their god, incarnate in the
sacred bull.

As Cambyses had heard at Thebes, that the army he had sent against the
oasis of Ammon in the Libyan desert, had perished miserably in a Khamsin,
or Simoom, and that his fleet, which was to conquer Carthage, had refused
to fight with a people of their own race, he fancied that the Memphians
must be celebrating a festival of joy at the news of his misfortunes,