es with their painted columns, those huge artificial
mountains, the Pyramids, where the ancient kings be buried--it must all
be wonderfully beautiful. But what pleases me best of all is your
description of the entertainments, where men and women converse together
as they like. The only meals we are allowed to take in the society of men
are on New Year's Day and the king's birthday, and then we are forbidden
to speak; indeed it is not thought right for us even to raise our eyes.
How different it is with you! By Mithras! mother, I should like to be an
Egyptian, for we poor creatures are in reality nothing but miserable
slaves; and yet I feel that the great Cyrus was my father too, and that I
am worth quite as much as most men. Do I not speak the truth? can I not
obey as well as command? have I not the same thirst and longing for
glory? could not I learn to ride, to string a bow, to fight and swim, if
I were taught and inured to such exercises?"

The girl had sprung from her seat while speaking, her eyes flashed and
she swung her spindle in the air, quite unconscious that in so doing she
was breaking the thread and entangling the flax.

"Remember what is fitting," reminded Kassandane. "A woman must submit
with humility to her quiet destiny, and not aspire to imitate the deeds
of men."

"But there are women who lead the same lives as men," cried Atossa.
"There are the Amazons who live on the shores of the Thermodon in
Themiscyra, and at Comana on the Iris; they have waged great wars, and
even to this day wear men's armor."

"Who told you this?"

"My old nurse, Stephanion, whom my father brought a captive from Sinope
to Pasargadae."

"But I can teach you better," said Nitetis. "It is true that in
Themiscyra and Comana there are a number of women who wear soldier's
armor; but they are only priestesses, and clothe themselves like the
warlike goddess they serve, in order to present to the worshippers a
manifestation of the divinity in human form. Croesus says that an army of
Amazons has never existed, but that the Greeks, (always ready and able to
turn anything into a beautiful myth), having seen these priestesses, at
once transformed the armed virgins dedicated to the goddess into a nation
of fighting women."

"Then they are liars!" exclaimed the disappointed girl.

"It is true, that the Greeks have not the same reverence for truth as you
have," answered Nitetis, "but they do not call the men who invent these
beautif