rse for his own crime in the assassination of
Smerdis, and anxiety on account of the extremely dangerous position in
which he had placed himself by his false denial of it, all conspired
to harass his mind with perpetual restlessness and misery, and to
make life a burden.

In order to do something to quiet the suspicions which the magi feared
were prevailing, they did not know how extensively, they conceived the
plan of inducing Prexaspes to declare in a more public and formal
manner what he had been asserting timidly in private, namely, that
Smerdis had not been killed. They accordingly convened an assembly of
the people in a court-yard of the palace, or perhaps took advantage of
some gathering casually convened, and proposed that Prexaspes should
address them from a neighboring tower. Prexaspes was a man of high
rank and of great influence, and the magi thought that his public
espousal of their cause, and his open and decided contradiction of the
rumor that he had killed Cambyses's brother, would fully convince the
Persians that it was really the rightful monarch that had taken
possession of the throne.

But the strength even of a strong man, when he has a lie to carry,
soon becomes very small. That of Prexaspes was already almost
exhausted and gone. He had been wavering and hesitating before, and
this proposal, that he should commit himself so formally and solemnly,
and in so public a manner, to statements wholly and absolutely
untrue, brought him to a stand. He decided, desperately, in his own
mind, that he would go on in his course of falsehood, remorse, and
wretchedness no longer. He, however, pretended to accede to the
propositions of the magi. He ascended the tower, and began to address
the people. Instead, however, of denying that he had murdered Smerdis,
he fully confessed to the astonished audience that he had really
committed that crime; he openly denounced the reigning Smerdis as an
impostor, and called upon all who heard him to rise at once, destroy
the treacherous usurper, and vindicate the rights of the true Persian
line. As he went on, with vehement voice and gestures, in this speech,
the utterance of which he knew sealed his own destruction, he became
more and more excited and reckless. He denounced his hearers in the
severest language if they failed to obey his injunctions, and
imprecated upon them, in that event, all the curses of Heaven. The
people listened to this strange and sudden phrensy of elo