nd had been received, he
called the leading nobles of his court and officers of his army about
his bedside, and said to them that he was about to die, and that he
was compelled, by the calamity which had befallen him, to declare to
them what he would otherwise have continued to keep concealed. The
person who had usurped the throne under the name of Smerdis, he now
said, was not, and could not be, his brother Smerdis, the son of
Cyrus. He then proceeded to give them an account of the manner in
which his fears in respect to his brother had been excited by his
dream, and of the desperate remedy that he had resorted to in ordering
him to be killed. He believed, he said, that the usurper was Smerdis
the magian, whom he had left as one of the regents when he set out on
his Egyptian campaign. He urged them, therefore, not to submit to his
sway, but to go back to Media, and if they could not conquer him and
put him down by open war, to destroy him by deceit and stratagem, or
in any way whatever by which the end could be accomplished. Cambyses
urged this with so much of the spirit of hatred and revenge beaming in
his hollow and glassy eye as to show that sickness, pain, and the
approach of death, which had made so total a change in the wretched
sufferer's outward condition, had altered nothing within.

Very soon after making this communication to his nobles, Cambyses
expired.

It will well illustrate the estimate which those who knew him best,
formed of this great hero's character, to state, that those who heard
this solemn declaration did not believe one word of it from beginning
to end. They supposed that the whole story which the dying tyrant had
told them, although he had scarcely breath enough left to tell it, was
a fabrication, dictated by his fraternal jealousy and hate. They
believed that it was really the true Smerdis who had been proclaimed
king, and that Cambyses had invented, in his dying moments, the story
of his having killed him, in order to prevent the Persians from
submitting peaceably to his reign.

CHAPTER III.

SMERDIS THE MAGIAN.

B.C. 520

Usurpation of the magians.--Circumstances favoring it.--Murder of
Smerdis not known.--He is supposed to be alive.--Precautions taken
by Smerdis.--Effect of Cambyses's measures.--Opinion in regard to
Smerdis.--Acquiescence of the people.--Dangerous situation of
Smerdis.--Arrangement with Patizithes.--Smerdis lives in
retirement.--Special grounds of apprehens