"And I," said Croesus taking up the conversation, "used the favorable
opportunity to dissuade him from the campaigns he has been planning
against the long lived Ethiopians, the Ammonians and the Carthaginians.
Of the first of these three nations we know scarcely anything but through
fabulous tales; by attacking them we should lose much and gain little.
The oasis of Ammon is scarcely accessible to a large army, on account of
the desert by which it is surrounded; besides which, it seems to me
sacrilegious to make war upon a god in the hope of obtaining possession
of his treasures, whether we be his worshippers or not. As to the
Carthaginians, facts have already justified my predictions. Our fleet is
manned principally by Syrians and Phoenicians, and they have, as might be
expected, refused to go to war against their brethren. Cambyses laughed
at my reasons, and ended by swearing, when he was already somewhat
intoxicated, that he could carry out difficult undertakings and subdue
powerful nations, even without the help of Bartja and Phanes."

"What could that allusion to you mean, my son?" asked Rhodopis.

"He won the battle of Pelusiam," cried Zopyrus, before his friend could
answer. "He and no one else!"

"Yes," added Croesus, "and you might have been more prudent, and have
remembered that it is a dangerous thing to excite the jealousy of a man
like Cambyses. You all of you forget that his heart is sore, and that
the slightest vexation pains him. He has lost the woman he really loved;
his dearest friend is gone; and now you want to disparage the last thing
in this world that he still cares for,--his military glory."

"Don't blame him," said Bartja, grasping the old man's hand. "My brother