o the
invader. He had left his children behind in Egypt; and these his former
comrades now seized, and led out in front of their lines, where they
slew them before their father's eyes, and, having so done, mixed their
blood in a bowl with water and wine, and drank, one and all, of the
mixture. The battle followed immediately after; but, in spite of their
courage and fanaticism, the Egyptian army was completely defeated.
According to Ctesias, fifty thousand fell on the vanquished side, while
the victors lost no more than seven thousand. Psammenitus, after his
defeat, threw himself into Memphis, but, being blockaded by land
and prevented from receiving supplies from the sea, after a stout
resistance, he surrendered. The captive monarch received the respectful
treatment which Persian clemency usually accorded to fallen sovereigns.
Herodotus even goes so far as to intimate that, if he had abstained from
conspiracy, he would probably have been allowed to continue ruler
of Egypt, exchanging, of course, his independent sovereignty for a
delegated kingship held at the pleasure of the Lord of Asia.

The conquest of Egypt was immediately followed by the submission of the
neighboring tribes. The Libyans of the desert tract which borders the
Nile valley to the west, and even the Greeks of the more remote Barca
and Cyrene, sent gifts to the conqueror and consented to become his
tributaries. But Cambyses placed little value on such petty accessions
to his power. Inheriting the grandeur of view which had characterized
his father, he was no sooner master of Egypt than he conceived the idea
of a magnificent series of conquests in this quarter, whereby he hoped
to become Lord of Africa no less than of Asia, or at any rate to leave
himself without a rival of any importance on the vast continent which
his victorious arms had now opened to him. Apart from Egypt, Africa
possessed but two powers capable, by their political organization and
their military strength, of offering him serious resistance. These were
Ethiopia and Carthage--the one the great power of the South, the equal,
if not even the superior, of Egypt--the other the great power of the
West--remote, little known, but looming larger for, the obscurity in
which she was shrouded, and attractive from her reputed wealth. The
views of Cambyses comprised the reduction of both these powers, and
also the conquest of the oasis of Ammon. As a good Zoroastrian, he was
naturally anxious to ex