An Egyptian Princess — Volume 10 by Georg Ebers
page 59 of 77 (76%)
page 59 of 77 (76%)
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friendship. She always called Sappho her sister. The hanging-gardens
were the latter's residence in summer, and in her conversations there with Kassandane and Atossa one name was often mentioned--the name of her, who had been the innocent cause of events which had decided the destinies of great kingdoms and noble lives--the Egyptian Princess. CHAPTER XVI. Here we might end this tale, but that we feel bound to give our readers some account of the last days of Cambyses. We have already described the ruin of his mind, but his physical end remains still to be told, and also the subsequent fate of some of the other characters in our history. A short time after the departure of the queens, news reached Naukratis that Oroetes, the satrap of Lydia, had, by a stratagem, allured his old enemy, Polykrates, to Sardis and crucified him there, thus fulfilling what Amasis had prophecied of the tyrant's mournful end. This act the satrap had committed on his own responsibility, events having taken place in the Median kingdom which threatened the fall of the Achaemenidaean dynasty. The king's long absence in a foreign country had either weakened or entirely dissipated, the fear which the mere mention of his name had formerly inspired in those who felt inclined to rebel. The awe that his subjects had formerly felt for him, vanished at the tidings of his madness, and the news that he had wantonly exposed the lives of thousands of their countrymen to certain death in the deserts of Libya and |
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