ii. 470 ff.

The traditions about Cambyses, preserved by the Greek authors, come from
two different sources. The first, which forms the main part of the
account of Herodotus (iii. 2; 4; 10-37), is of Egyptian origin. Here
Cambyses is made the legitimate son of Cyrus and a daughter of Apries
(Herod, iii. 2, Dinon fr. 11, Polyaen. viii. 29), whose death he avenges
on the successor of the usurper Amasis. (In Herod, iii. 1 and Ctesias
_ap_. Athen. xiii. 560 D, this tradition is corrected by the Persians:
Cambyses wants to marry a daughter of Amasis, who sends him a daughter
of Apries instead of his own daughter, and by her Cambyses is induced to
begin the war.) His great crime is the killing of the Apis, for which he
is punished by madness, in which he commits many other crimes, kills his
brother and his sister, and at last loses his empire and dies from a
wound in the hip, at the same place where he had wounded the sacred
animal. Intermingled are some stories derived from the Greek
mercenaries, especially about their leader Phanes of Halicarnassus, who
betrayed Egypt to the Persians. In the Persian tradition the crime of
Cambyses is the murder of his brother; he is further accused of
drunkenness, in which he commits many crimes, and thus accelerates his
ruin. These traditions are found in different passages of Herodotus, and
in a later form, but with some trustworthy detail about his household,
in the fragments of Ctesias. With the exception of Babylonian dated
tablets and some Egyptian inscriptions, we possess no contemporary
evidence about the reign of Cambyses but the short account of Darius in
the Behistun inscription. It is impossible from these sources to form a
correct picture of Cambyses' character; but it seems certain that he was
a wild despot and that he was led by drunkenness to many atrocious
deeds.

It was quite natural that, after Cyrus had conquered Asia, Cambyses
should undertake the conquest of Egypt, the only remaining independent
state of the Eastern world. Before he set out on his expedition he
killed his brother Bardiya (Smerdis), whom Cyrus had appointed governor
of the eastern provinces. The date is given by Darius, whereas the Greek
authors narrate the murder after the conquest of Egypt. The war took
place in 525, when Amasis had just been succeeded by his son
Psammetichus III. Cambyses had prepared for the march through the desert
by an alliance with Arabian chieftains, who brought a large suppl