capitally punished.
Such stringent measures had all the effect that was expected from them;
they wholly crushed the nascent rebellion; they left, however, behind
them a soreness, felt alike by the conqueror and the conquered, which
prevented the establishment of a good understanding between the Great
King and his new subjects. Cambyses knew that he had been severe, and
that his severity had made him many enemies; he suspected the people,
and still more suspected the priests, their natural leaders; he soon
persuaded himself that policy required in Egypt a departure from the
principles of toleration which were ordinarily observed towards their
subjects by the Persians, and a sustained effort on the part of the
civil power to bring the religion, and its priests, into contempt.
Accordingly, he commenced a serious of acts calculated to have this
effect. He stabbed the sacred calf, believed to be incarnate Apis; he
ordered the body of priests who had the animal in charge to be publicly
scourged; he stopped the Apis festival by making participation in it a
capital offence; he opened the receptacles of the dead, and curiously
examined the bodies contained in them, he intruded himself into the
chief sanctuary at Memphis, and publicly scoffed at the grotesque
image of Phtha; finally, not content with outraging in the same way the
inviolable temple of the Cabeiri, he wound up his insults by ordering
that their images should be burnt. These injuries and indignities
rankled in the minds of the Egyptians, and probably had a large share in
producing that bitter hatred of the Persian yoke which shows itself in
the later history on so many occasions; but for the time the policy was
successful: crushed beneath the iron heel of the conqueror--their faith
in the power of their gods shaken, their spirits cowed, their hopes
shattered--the Egyptian subjects of Cambyses made up their minds to
submission. The Oriental will generally kiss the hand that smites him,
if it only smite hard enough. Egypt became now for a full generation the
obsequious slave of Persia, and gave no more trouble to her subjugator
than the weakest or the most contented of the provinces.

The work of subjection completed, Cambyses, having been absent from his
capital longer than was at all prudent, prepared to return home. He had
proceeded on his way as far as Syria, when intelligence reached him of
a most unexpected nature. A herald suddenly entered his camp and
proclaim