yrian,
his neighbour, whose power increased daily. For this purpose, he entered
Palestine at the head of an army.

Perhaps we are to refer to the beginning of this war, an incident related
by Diodorus;(454) that the Egyptians, provoked to see the Greeks posted on
the right wing by the king himself, in preference to them, quitted the
service, to the number of upwards of two hundred thousand men, and retired
into Ethiopia, where they met with an advantageous settlement.

Be this as it will, Psammetichus entered Palestine,(455) where his career
was stopped by Azotus, one of the principal cities of the country, which
gave him so much trouble, that he was forced to besiege it twenty-nine
years before he could take it. This is the longest siege mentioned in
ancient history.

This was anciently one of the five capital cities of the Philistines. The
Egyptians, having seized it some time before, had fortified it with such
care, that it was their strongest bulwark on that side. Nor could
Sennacherib enter Egypt, till he had first made himself master of this
city,(456) which was taken by Tartan, one of his generals. The Assyrians
had possessed it hitherto; and it was not till after the long siege just
now mentioned, that the Egyptians recovered it.

In this period,(457) the Scythians, leaving the banks of the Palus Maeotis,
made an inroad into Media, defeated Cyaxares, the king of that country,
and deprived him of all Upper Asia, of which they kept possession during
twenty-eight years. They pushed their conquests in Syria as far as to the
frontiers of Egypt. But Psammetichus marching out to meet them, prevailed
so far, by his presents and entreaties, that they advanced no farther, and
by that means delivered his kingdom from these dangerous enemies.

Till his reign,(458) the Egyptians had imagined themselves to be the most
ancient nation upon earth. Psammetichus was desirous to prove this
himself, and he employed a very extraordinary experiment for this purpose.
He commanded (if we may credit the relation) two children, newly born of
poor parents, to be brought up (in the country) in a hovel, that was to be
kept continually shut. They were committed to the care of a shepherd,
(others say, of nurses, whose tongues were cut out,) who was to feed them
with the milk of goats; and was commanded not to suffer any person to
enter into this hut, nor himself to speak even a single word in the
hearing of these children. At the expiratio